British tourist killed as bus crashes into ravine on Spanish island
A bus carrying British tourists crashed on Spain’s La Gomera island, killing one person and injuring 27, with a suspected brake failure under investigation.
Rescuers work at the scene of a bus crash near in San Sebastian de La Gomera, in Spain's Canary Islands, Friday, Apr 10, 2026. (Photo: AP/Europa Press Canarias)
MADRID: A bus carrying British tourists veered off a highway down an embankment on Spain's Atlantic island of La Gomera on Friday (Apr 10), killing one Briton and injuring 27 people, including three children, authorities said.
Canary Islands emergency services announced the death of a man, with a spokeswoman confirming to AFP that he was British.
Four of the injured were in a serious condition, including the 63-year-old driver who would be taken to hospital on the island of Tenerife, the emergency services added.
A picture shared on X showed the white bus, which was carrying 28 people including the driver, overturned on steep and rocky terrain underneath the road's hairpin bend.
The bus "fortunately stopped shortly after coming off, because otherwise it could have been much more serious", the central government's representative on the island, Juan Luis Navarro, told reporters.
A brake failure was the working hypothesis, and the driver "tried to fight to avoid coming off until he eventually went down the slope", Navarro said.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government was in touch with Spanish authorities and "ready to support" Britons and their families caught up in the accident.
"My thoughts are with those affected by the tragic incident involving a bus carrying British holidaymakers in the Canary Islands," she said on X. The Foreign Office also confirmed that the man who died was a British national.
A warm climate and picturesque beaches make the Canary Islands a popular tourist destination in Spain, the world's second most-visited country after France.
More than 15 million people visited the Atlantic archipelago in 2025, according to national statistics body INE.
