No fewer than four people have been confirmed dead, and dozens of others sustained varying degrees of injuries when a three-storey building under construction collapsed in central Madrid, Spain.
The four victims have been identified as three male construction workers aged between 30 and 50 from Ecuador, Mali and Guinea-Conakry, and the renovation project’s architect, a 30-year-old woman.
The deceased were said to be working on the building to complete their task for the day when the structure under construction caved in on them.
Firefighters recovered their bodies early on Wednesday, nearly 15 hours after the collapse of “several floors” inside the property, the city’s mayor, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, wrote on X.
The former office building, located in an area of downtown Madrid popular with tourists near the city’s opera house and royal palace, was being converted into a four-star hotel when it collapsed.
One worker, a man named Mikhail, told newsmen at the scene that he was pumping concrete into the building’s lower floors from the outside when he saw a large cloud of dust, causing him to sprint away.
“I was the first to run; I didn’t care about anything else. I’ll save my life first and, if I can, save others later,” he said.
The search-and-rescue operation following the collapse of the building’s interior structure, which left its facade intact, involved more than 50 firefighters, drones and sniffer dogs.
Francisco Martin Aguirre, a delegate for the Spanish government in Madrid, told Spanish media organisation El Diario that the collapse caused “a sheer drop to the basement”, describing it as “an industrial incident”.
The property was built in 1965 and underwent two technical inspections in 2012 and 2022, according to Madrid’s online registry of ‘buildings under construction’.
Following the inspections, the building was classified as “unfavourable” due to “the general condition of the facade, exterior, partition walls, roof, roof terraces and plumbing and sewage system”.
The renovation works, which were approved by local authorities in December 2024, were expected to last two years.
