Rail transport in Spain


Rail transport in Spain operates on four rail gauges and services are operated by a variety of private and public operators. The total route length in 2012 was 16,026 km.
Most railways are operated by Renfe Operadora; metre and narrow-gauge lines are operated by FEVE and other carriers in individual autonomous communities. It is proposed and planned to build or convert more lines to standard gauge, including some dual gauging of broad-gauge lines, especially where these lines link to France, including platforms to be heightened.
Spain is a member of the International Union of Railways. The UIC Country Code for Spain is 71.

History

The first railway line in the Iberian Peninsula was built in 1848 between Barcelona and Mataró. In 1851 the Madrid-Aranjuez line was opened. In 1852 the first narrow gauge line was built; in 1863 a line reached the Portuguese border. By 1864 the Madrid-Irun line had been opened, and the French border reached.
In 1900 the first line to be electrified was La Poveda-Madrid.
In 1941 RENFE was created.
The last steam locomotive was withdrawn in 1975, in 1986 the maximum speed on the railways was raised to 160 km/h, and in 1992 the Madrid-Seville high-speed line opened, beginning the process of building a nationwide high-speed network known as AVE.
The current plans of the Spanish government are to finish the standard-gauge high-speed network by building new sections of track and upgrading and converting to standard gauge the existing line along the Mediterranean coast connecting the ports of Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, Cartagena and Almería, and to link Madrid with Vigo, Santiago and A Coruña in Galicia, and to extend the Madrid-Valladolid line to Burgos and the Basque cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian and Hendaye on the French border, as well as to link Madrid with Lisbon and the port of Sines through Badajoz. Former plans by the Popular Party government under PM Aznar to link all provincial capitals with high-speed rail have been shelved as unrealistic, unaffordable, and contrary to all economic logic as no European funding would be made available for such projects.
Following the opening of the AVE network, the classic Iberian gauge railways have lost importance in inter-city travel, for example, the Madrid–Barcelona railway takes over nine hours to travel between the two cities stopping at every station. With the Madrid–Barcelona high-speed rail line, the longest possible journey is just three hours. This has allowed the conventional lines to increase focus on regional and commuter traffic, along with freight. Some lines, including the Córdoba-Bobadilla section of the classic Córdoba–Málaga railway, have lost passenger traffic completely due to the opening of AVE serving the same destinations.
Many important mainland Spanish towns remain disconnected to the rail network, the largest being Marbella with a population of over 140,000, along with Roquetas de Mar, El Ejido, Chiclana de la Frontera and Torrevieja. Other towns and municipalities are not on the national rail network but linked to light rail or metro systems, such as Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Barcelona ; Getxo, Biscay ; Torrent, Valencia ; and Benidorm, Alicante.
Starting in Franco's regime and continuing into the 1980s, multiple lines of the Spanish rail network were closed. Campaigns for reopening former lines exist, including a reopening the branch to the aforementioned Torrevieja from the Alicante–Murcia main line; the former line from Guadix to Lorca via Baza ; Plasencia to Salamanca and Gandía to Dénia.

Operators

Conventional Iberian gauge lines

In Spain there is an extensive 1,250 km system of metre gauge railways.

Metro/light rail systems

Andorra has no rail system
In 2004, the Spanish government adopted a new strategic plan for transportation through 2020 called the PEIT. This detailed rail subsidies of around €9.3 billion annually on average from 2005-2020. In 2010, it rolled out a two-year plan to invest an extra €11 billion each year for two years, as a part of a financial stimulus in response to the global downturn. In 2015, the federal budget for the railways was €5.1 billion.