The Xátiva section delays the high-speed connection with Valencia and Barcelona by two years

In addition to the Murcia-Almería connection, which will not be completed before 2026, the other neck of the Mediterranean Corridor is located in the La Encina-Xátiva section, which will have to wait at least two years to be integrated into the high-speed network. This is the time that users from the Region of Murcia and Alicante will have to wait to travel by AVE to Valencia, Barcelona and the French border.

The current deficit sections of the corridor will be analyzed today in Barcelona at the summit organized by the Valencian Association of Entrepreneurs (AVE), which will be attended by the Catalan president, Pere Aragonés, and his counterparts from the Region of Murcia and the Valencian Community, Fernando López Miras and Ximo Puig, respectively.

Murcia will be connected by AVE to Madrid next month, according to the Ministry’s forecasts, but communications in the Mediterranean Arc run into the La Encina-Xátiva section, another weak link in the corridor. Adif has started the tests of the Iberian gauge track, after years of works at a cost of more than 400 million, but the second phase is ahead, which is the adaptation to high speed, with an added cost of almost 190 millions.

The Government commissioner for the Mediterranean Corridor, Josep Vicent Boira, who visited Murcia last Monday, stressed that we will have to wait until 2025. He pointed out that once this section is finished, four million citizens, plus potential tourists from Alicante, Murcia and Andalusia, “will be able to connect to the European network, connecting with Valencia, Barcelona and the rest of Europe.” When that happens, the Avant de Media Distancia trains will take 90 minutes to cover the route between Murcia, Alicante and Valencia. Likewise, the Euromed service from Barcelona to the Region of Murcia will be extended.

López Miras, Puig and Aragones

The business summit for the Mediterranean Corridor that takes place this morning in Barcelona has scored a goal before it is held. And it is that for the first time a president of the Catalan Generalitat will participate in this act that will review the infrastructure every six months. More than 1,500 businessmen and civil society representatives are expected to attend.

Pere Aragonès will act as host, according to the organizers, and will not follow the path of Quim Torra, who in 2018 did not attend the business summit held in Barcelona. In fact, Aragonès will be the first Catalan president to participate in an act of these characteristics, given that the institutional representation had been limited to that of the Minister of Public Works.

Aragonès is expected to be in the family photo with López Miras and Ximo Puig, at the expense of the Minister of Transport and Mobility, Raquel Sánchez, also doing so. The leaders of the most representative business organizations of the four autonomous communities, such as the Valencia Chamber, the CEV, Foment de Treball, Cercle d’Economia, Croem and the CEA, will also attend. They will be joined by the CEOE, led by Antonio Garamendi (who has an electoral process next week), the port authorities and representative businessmen such as Juan Roig, from Mercadona.