trains

Decision comes as cabinet tries to persuade Madrid for full control of network in Catalonia

Protest has led to severe disruptions in services and heavier road traffic

Service resumes in Barcelona's main station, Sants, as some lines go over four hours without carriages

French company offers Barcelona-Madrid trips from €9, and Renfe will compete with AVLO low-cost trains

Liberalization of railway services to increase commercial offer by 65%

When are they taking place, who’s calling the protests, and how will it affect you

Alstom's factory in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda will start delivery of the high-tech rolling stock in December 2021

The high speed railway line that connects Girona to Barcelona registered 1.01 million travelers throughout 2016. That is the same volume of passengers that went from Catalonia’s capital city to Tarragona over the last nine years according to statistics provided by Renfe, the Spanish train operator. Barcelona is not only connected to Girona and Tarragona; Avant trains also travel to Lleida. This route has also been a great success in 2016, used by 4.03 million passengers. Altogether 10.7 million people have traveled from the four Catalan provincial capitals since 2008. 2016 was the most successful year with 2.05 million travelers.

Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability, Josep Rull, explained this Friday that the Government has presented an appeal before Spain’s High Court, the ‘Audiencia Nacional’, denouncing Adif’s lack of investment in the short and medium railway network in Catalonia. Rull accuses the Spanish public body in charge of railway infrastructure and the Spanish Ministry for Infrastructure of not complying with the agreed investment. “We open the judicial way because the political one between both governments has proved to be broken”, he stated. Rull pointed out that Adif committed to investing 306 million euros in Catalonia’s railway network and only so far only 4.2% of this has been carried out. “Therefore, there is a flagrant failure to fulfil”, he insisted. Current Spanish Vice-president, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, responded to the Government’s action and stated that “this proves that those who think they are right turn to the legal mechanisms available”.

The terrorist attacks in Paris in November last year unleashed a wave of police checks throughout the continent, especially along the French border near Girona. It is suspected that criminals have given up using cars to transport illegal goods across the border and are now using the train network as their preferred means of transport. To battle against this, a strategy had to be designed by both the Spanish and French police agencies that would see them working together to find an effective solution before it became too much of a problem. These teams have been in operation on the high-speed train that operates between Paris and Barcelona for the past three years now.  

Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont celebrated the “consensus” that the construction of the Mediterranean Railway Corridor has amongst the political, social and economic agents in Catalonia and also amongst the regional governments involved in the construction, such as those of Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Murcia. However, he urged Spain’s executive “to listen” to their demands and also to Europe’s warnings and promote thislong-awaited piece of infrastructure which is set to transport freight and passengers non-stop from Gibraltar to Central Europe. Indeed, the European Court of Auditors reported on Tuesday that the EU “had not been effective in enhancing rail freight transport” and that the targets for “the number of freight trains and the tonnage of goods transported” on the section between Spain and France, which has still to be completed, “are far from being achieved”.

The short-distance train network has been interrupted this morning in the centre of Barcelona due to a fire in an abandoned station in the centre of the Catalan capital. Although the fire was extinguished by 7 am CET this Tuesday, the smoke continued to spread throughout the city’s train tunnels for hours, affecting six stations, more than 210 trains, metro line 1 and nearly 100,000 passengers, according to the Catalan Government. An accumulation of waste in the abandoned station is most likely to have been the cause of the fire. Today’s chaos is to be added to a long list of problems which have occurred on the network during the last decade, mainly due to a lack of investment in infrastructure by the Spanish Government.

Today’s chaos in Catalonia’s railway system, operated by Spanish public train operator Renfe, is to be added to a long list of problems which have occurred on this network during the last decade. On this occasion, 60 short-distance trains and 25,000 passengers were affected by an attempted copper theft in three different train stations in the Barcelona area. This criminal act caused several small fires in the railway installations of Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, La Llagosta and Mollet del Vallès, around 20 kilometres away from Barcelona, which led to 30-minute minimum delays on four different lines. Alternative routes and extra buses have been added to guarantee the mobility of these citizens and according to the Spanish public company in charge of building and maintaining the railway infrastructure, Adif, the consequences will still affect nearly 60,000 people and 200 trains throughout the day.  

A theft of a fibre optic cable at about 7am this morning caused the absolute paralysation of the High Speed Trains’ service in Catalonia. 40 trains and 13,000 passengers all over the territory were affected. The breakdown started in the route between Figueres, in the north of Catalonia and Barcelona and it consequently affected the whole network. The only trains running from early morning are those between Lleida, in the east of Catalonia and Camp de Tarragona, in the south. Alternative routes and extra buses have been added to guarantee the mobility of these citizens and Renfe, the Spanish public trains’ operator, expects to normalise the system during the day by low-speed trains. This serious incident is to be added to a long list of problems which have occurred in this network during the last decade mainly due to the lack of investment in infrastructure by the Spanish Government.

Lluís Llach, one of the most famous Catalan musicians and one of the main voices against Franco's dictatorship, will  top the pro-independence unitary list running in the Girona Province in the forthcoming Catalan elections, which should become a 'de facto' referendum on independence. In the Tarragona Province, the 'Junts pel Sí' pro-independence list ('Together for the Yes') will be topped by economics professor Germà Bel, an expert on infrastructure. The list groups together Liberal, Social-Democrat, Green, and Christian-Democrat politicians, as well as many independents and representatives from civil society. It will officially start the independence process if they win the elections and pro-independence parties obtain an absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament. The list is topped by former Eco-Socialist Member of the European Parliament, Raül Romeva, who is running in Barcelona Province.