During the summer of the 1992 Olympic Games, it was easier to find a train to travel from Barcelona to A Coruña than today. The same with cities like León, Bilbao or Albacete. The railway history of the last three decades in Spain has been led by a boom of high speed, due to the neglect of the Cercanías networks or due to the recent advances of the Mediterranean Corridor. But from the Catalan capital there is also the loss of direct connections with large peninsular cities, particularly on the periphery and in the north.
A study by the ‘Fundació Mobilitat Sostenible i Segura’ with the railway roadmap for Catalonia reflects this. The analysis, prepared by engineer Josep Maria Olivé for the Iberian Railway Alliance, compares direct connections and long-distance frequencies from Barcelona with other Spanish cities between 1992 and 2024. And the balance is clear. The Barcelona-Madrid AVE has grown like no other, the connections with Valencia and some other cities have been maintained, but many others have been reduced or have disappeared from the map altogether.
“The great investment in high speed in recent decades with new lines throughout Spain, contrary to what it might seem, has not increased connections from any point, but has concentrated them in Madrid and its corridor,” says Olivé, engineer specializing in Public Transportation and responsible for analyzing the data that appears in the report.
In total, the Catalan capital has lost 30% of direct connections with cities in the rest of Spain. Although many of those that have disappeared were stops on long-distance itineraries in medium-sized cities, the truth is that in large capitals frequencies have also been reduced. By autonomous communities to which to travel from Barcelona, the trend has been downward in all of them except the Community of Madrid, Aragón, Valencia and Murcia, according to the report Roadmap for railway development in Catalonia.
Some of the most affected routes are those that connect Catalonia with northern Spain. In the case of the Basque Country, the journey time has been reduced by two hours and a trip to Vitoria has been gained, but the count is negative because a train to Bilbao and San Sebastián has been lost (now it is one a day; before there were two in high season). Up to three trains have been lost to Logroño: from four a day and one on alternate days (which were five in high season) it went down to only one a day. Cities such as León, Palencia, Ponferrada or Burgos, for their part, have up to three fewer connections in high season with Catalonia than three decades ago.
Many of the lost frequencies correspond to night trains, which since the pandemic Renfe stopped operating and for now there are no plans to recover because it considers that there is no demand. In this sense, the AVE and long-distance routes are not considered Public Service Obligation (OSP), so they cannot receive subsidies and, therefore, must be economically profitable.
Even so, defenders of the commitment to the railway allege that many of the cut routes continue to have high demand, especially on key dates when supply is not usually increased enough. “Three months before any holiday season, or a long weekend, the trains to Andalusia or Galicia are already full,” laments Olivé, who adds that this is aggravated by Renfe’s commitment to automotive convoys, which are less flexible. .
What explains why connections from Barcelona have been reduced? One of them is “the commitment to High Speed that passes through Madrid,” says Pablo Salvador, professor of Transportation Engineering and Infrastructure at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV). In this way, connections that could previously be direct from the Catalan capital, such as to cities from Castilla y León to Asturias, can be made with a transfer at Madrid stations and in less time than a conventional line. “Many passengers do not give it importance,” says this professor.
Another factor that explains the decline is the competition in the last 20 years of aviation. low costwhich has united large cities on the peninsula in just a few and at a much lower price. But then there is also the lack of political will to promote a competitive railway network in the periphery, according to Salvador. “There has been no desire to promote it because it is considered the responsibility of the AVE, when in reality it has a structuring function of the territory that should be complementary,” he adds.
The data for the AVE to Madrid from Barcelona speak for themselves: journeys have multiplied by seven, without also mentioning the time cut of more than five hours that high speed entails. Today, there are up to 50 daily trains between the two cities, also thanks to the incorporation of the Ouigo and Iryo offer. As for Valencia, the other major connection from Barcelona, a similar number of trains is maintained, around ten daily, with the added bonus of the Euromed.
Regarding Andalusia, the data collected by Olivé confirms a reinforcement of connections with cities such as Seville and Córdoba, from four to five a day. Until now, the loser was Málaga, which went from three to two. But the report did not yet take into account the new service that Iryo announced for this month of December, which covers the route from Malaga to Barcelona via Córdoba.
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