Only three of the twenty-two infants and children on board the crashed aircraft survived.

The youngest was Virginia Carretero’s nephew, Roberto, 6. She had kissed him and her niece, María, 16, goodbye at the airport. They were expected home in Grand Canary, where their parents were waiting to collect them.

At 6pm Ms Carretero learnt that Roberto was in hospital. “My nephew has been saved, but we don’t know anything about his sister,” she said. “Perhaps she’s lost her memory and can’t say her name in the hospital. Hopefully.”

Alfredo Acosta Mendiola, 8, survived and was being treated for a broken leg but his father, Colombian-born Alfredo Acosta Sierra, 60, died and his mother, Gregoria Mendiola Rodriguez, 45, was in a coma.

A rescue worker told how Alfredo was crying out for his parents as he was taken to hospital. “He was very together, complaining about some pain, but what most worried him was finding his parents.”

The family lived in the village of Torralba de Calatrava, in the province of Ciudad Real, 130 miles (210km) south of Madrid. They were flying to the Canary Islands for a short holiday. A spokeswoman for the mayor in Torralba de Calatrava said that the village had been devastated by news of the tragedy. “Alfredo is out of danger,” she said. “We are all praying that Gregoria will pull through.”

María Alonso Filloy, 11, was in a serious condition. Her father was critical while both her mother and her sister Amalia, 13, died.

At least two families were entirely wiped out in the crash. Others, including a Bavarian family who had boarded the flight after travelling from Germany, have yet to be accounted for. Jose Alcazar, 47, died along with his wife Maria Victoria Asensio, 45, and his daughters Inmaculada, 19 and Nieves, 11. They came from the town of Almagro, 150 miles south of Madrid.

Alejandro Villanueva Martin, 38, from Malaga in southern Spain, died with his wife and three children, aged 12, 10 and 4.

The high number of child fatalities has had a profound effect on a nation in mourning, a psychologist said. “It’s much more traumatic when it happens to a child . . . because it is against nature,” Paco Duque, at Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid, said.

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