A police officer said the bodies were so hot that police could barely touch them and that the shattered wreckage bore no resemblance to a plane.

There were only 26 survivors in yesterday's mid-afternoon crash, said the Spanish minister responsible for aviation, Magdalena Alvarez.

The Spanish prime minister has cut short his holiday to rush back to Madrid and the Queen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown have both expressed sympathy and shock at the loss of life.

The nationality of the passengers is not yet known. However, it is known that a small number of tickets for the flight were sold in Germany. The Foreign Office was not aware of any British nationals involved in the crash.

Spanair Flight JK5022 – bound for Las Palmas – was barely airborne when it veered right, crashed and broke into pieces.

A spokesman for Scandanavian-owned carrier Spanair said it was carrying 175 people and the cause of the crash was not immediately known.

However, the plane's take-off had been delayed for an hour by technical problems.

Boeing, which took over McDonell Douglas who built the MD-82 15 years ago, said it would help the investigation. It said the plane passed an inspection in January and no problems with it had been reported.