perpignan

The Spanish public company in charge of building and maintaining railway infrastructures, Adif, has confirmed the awaited date. Adif will have all the work finished by the end of this year, including the overhead line set in the tunnels crossing Barcelona and Girona. This will enable the train service linking Barcelona and Girona to the French city of Perpignan to be operational by April 2013. This work, funded and managed by the Spanish Government, has accumulated many years of inexplicable delays before connecting Spain’s high-speed network to Europe.

According to the Catalan Government, the High-Speed Train service linking the Catalan capital with the French border has been delayed one more year, this time until the end of 2013. The reason is that work on two sections of the railway, managed by the Spanish Government, is still pending to be allocated. They are the Barcelona exit and the section through Girona; both total €33 million according to the Catalan Government. The rest is already built and the service between the northern city of Figueres and the French city of Perpignan is already in operation. However, this strategic railway is not fully completed between Figueres and Barcelona due to a long list of delays.

Jordi-Pere Cerdà was awarded Catalonia’s highest distinctions, including the National Prize for Literature, the Cross of Sant Jordi and the Prize of Honour of Catalan Letters. He wrote under the pseudonym Antoni Cayrol and was one of the main Catalan voices of the Roussillon.

The USA Perpignan team visited the Camp Nou and exchanged photos, good wishes and shirts with the Barça players. They were all clearly impressed later on when they visited the Nou Camp installations.

A high-speed train will link Figueres, in the Girona Province, and Perpignan, the capital of the French Roussillon, crossing through the Pyrenees. However, the Figueres-Barcelona part has not yet been finished and will enter into service in 2014. Besides, France has not yet started the construction of a high-speed railway between Perpignan and Montpellier, which could take up to 10 years time.