Hundreds injured at Spanish music festival as pier collapses 'after crowd told to jump'

'The floor dropped like a lift. It was a matter of five seconds'

Emergency services attend to injured after jetty collapse (EPA)

Hundreds of people have been injured after a pier in northern Spain collapsed during a music concert, reportedly when a rapper told the crowd to jump.

Authorities in the Spanish city of Vigo said an oceanside jetty collapsed around midnight on Sunday at the closing event of a three-day festival.

Some 260 people were injured – many of them young people – with five seriously hurt, officials said.

Emergency services said the wooden boards cracked along a central section, about 40 metres long, and people slid down into the sea below. Eyewitnesses reported scenes of panic.

The president of the Vigo port authority, Enrique Cesar Lopez Veiga, said he suspects there was a structural problem in the walkway, which is supported by concrete pillars.

Emergency service teams helped the injured, while divers were sent to the sea in order to check no one was trapped beneath the wooden structure.

Local media reported the pier gave way when Rels B, a Majorcan rapper, told the crowd to jump during his first song.

“The floor dropped like a lift. It was a matter of five seconds,” Aitana Alonso told newspaper Faro de Vigo. “It broke and we all fell. People fell on me.

“I had trouble getting out. I was trying to get out and skidded, my foot got stuck, in the water. I got it out. A boy gave me his hand and I got out. I felt paralysed and [then] I left. There was a girl with blood on her head.”

On his Twitter account, Rels B wished “strength” to the injured and advised anyone worried about friends or relatives to head to a help desk set up in the town.

Officials said the five people who were seriously hurt do not have life-threatening injuries.

Additional reporting by AP