The year was 2004 and in the offices of the Junta de Andalucía one of the infrastructures was beginning to be forged that today, two decades later, seem to be doomed forever. Once the A-92 highway was completed after more than ten years of work, the socialist Executive at the time sought to launch a new large regional infrastructure to sell politically and found its ally in the railway. This is how the Transversal Railway Axis of Andalusia (EFTA) emerged, a new line that would allow the 500 kilometers of distance between the east and east of the community to be traveled in about three and a half hours. But, like many of the works that were planned during the brick, they ended up being fodder for the economic crisis of 2008 after burying 280 million in different sections that have not seen that train pass.
To advance the construction of this line, the then president of the community, Manuel Chaves, announced the creation of the public company Ferrocarriles de la Junta de Andalucía—now the Public Works Agency of Andalusia—. The regional government sold it as an axis that “would contribute to reinforcing the structuring of the Andalusian territory”, by sewing an almost straight route between Huelva, Seville, Málaga, Granada and Almería at a minimum of 250 kilometers per hour.
Objective: Seville-Málaga in 55 minutes
The Board is carrying out the works on the most important section of the route, the one that would link Seville and Antequera (Málaga), with a view to achieving the goal of connecting the two largest Andalusian cities, separated by 129 kilometers, in about 55 minutes. The rest of the sections would be executed by the State. For its construction, it budgeted a route of 1.3 billion euros that was never completely executed: when the economic crisis hit in 2008, all the planes went to the trust.
After years of paralysis, the Board suspended the works in 2013, when 60% of the route between Antequera and Seville, about 76 kilometers, had been completed. The excavators reached Marchena, a municipality 40 kilometers from the Andalusian capital, where the entire track platform was built. To carry out these sections, some 287 million euros were invested, including compensation for termination of contracts with successful companies that never started them despite having won the contracts.
From Marchena to Seville, the most complex section, was blocked. The exit from the capital of Seville had to be done through a tunnel that connected the Santa Justa station with the airport, a 10-kilometer stretch that was going to cost 274 million euros and that never saw the light of day. Nor its subsequent ones, in the surroundings of Carmona, which had to be carried out underground and which raised the bill another 127 million. But if that were not enough, in 2014 it was learned that Brussels had opened a file against the Board for failing to comply with environmental regulations by not commissioning a study for a section that affected a protected area for birds.
The State is executing its sections
While the project of the Junta de Andalucía remains kept in a drawer, the sections under the jurisdiction of the State continue with their works. The track between Antequera and Granada was remodeled—except for a small section in Loja that requires a multimillion-dollar variant—to facilitate the arrival of high-speed trains. The Granada-Almería section will be completely renovated with an investment of more than 500 million euros, while Adif continues with the works on the Mediterranean Corridor to expand this route towards Murcia.
The only section under the responsibility of the central administration that has not registered progress is the one that will connect Huelva with Seville, pending an environmental report. Taking advantage of this void and after Portugal supported the recovery of the train connection between the Algarve and Huelva, the current president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, made a gesture of wanting to recover the Transversal Axis during the electoral pre-campaign of the last local elections May, although no further news in this regard has been revealed since his Government.
Plan B to connect Seville and Malaga, already underway
These intentions seem complicated to square with the plans that the Ministry of Transport has in place, which through its public company Adif, is building a link in Almodóvar del Río, near Córdoba, to be able to connect Seville and Málaga by train. high-speed trains taking advantage of the lines that already reach both cities. This ‘bypass’ will save about 20 minutes compared to the 95-minute duration of the current journey, which requires entering Córdoba and reversing the direction of travel.
The bad relations between the Junta de Andalucía and the Ministry of Transport have caused the only agreement reached by both parties in recent years to be the transfer of an almost completed 9.3 kilometer section of the Transversal Axis after an environmental catastrophe. In 2018, a rain storm swept past the Río Blanco bridge in Aguadulce (Seville), suspending train circulation until the facilities were fixed.
To try to recover normality in medium-distance traffic as soon as possible, they join the two cities, Adif and La Junta, so a solution is to connect the conventional line to the already built platform of the transverse axis, taking advantage of the fact that this section ran parallel. After a year of tug-of-war, both parties approved the transfer of the railroad land that was never executed for 28 million. Meanwhile, the rest of the sections continue to see time pass, but not the trains, with an increasingly complicated future.