The long-awaited project for a direct rail link between Lisbon and Madrid took a major step forward on 30 October with the signing of an agreement involving the Portuguese and Spanish governments and the European Commission. By 2030, this service will initially take 5 hours by conventional train, a time that will be reduced to 3 hours by 2034 thanks to the use of high-speed trains. Studies have shown that this shorter journey time will generate significant business and leisure traffic. The European Commission states that " The European Regional Development Fund will invest €265m to improve more than 178 km of the 715 km Madrid-Lisbon high-speed rail link, particularly in the Extremadura region. ".
A project launched in the 1990s
The project for a high-speed line (LGV) between the two Iberian capitals is an old sea snake dating back to the 1990s, with service originally scheduled for 2016. The Spanish began building part of the line back in 2007 as part of their extensive programme to build a national high-speed network. When completed, the journey time between Madrid and Badajoz, the Spanish town on the border, is expected to take 2? hours.
On the Portuguese side, the government shelved the project in 2012 for budgetary reasons at a time when the country was going through a serious financial crisis. Most of the work to be carried out on this cross-border high-speed line now concerns Portugal, with a bridge to be built to cross the Tagus. This high-speed line will provide an opportunity to adopt the standard European gauge on this route - 23.3 cm smaller than the Iberian gauge - in order to connect Lisbon to the rest of the European TGV network.
This project is largely financed by Europe, not least because of the environmental benefits it represents. Indeed, the carbon emissions of rail transport are much lower than those of air transport, which is currently the most widely used means of transport between Madrid and Lisbon, with around forty flights a day and a journey time of around an hour. " This project is more than just a rail link; it represents a step towards the future of sustainable mobility and European cohesion. "Portugal's Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz made this clear at the time of the agreement.
10 Commission projects to connect Europe by train
This Lisbon-Madrid line is one of 10 rail projects supported by the European Commission, which is seeking to develop cross-border traffic by creating or renovating tracks. The programme also includes financial support for the London-Amsterdam routes (operated by Eurostar), Budapest-Vienna-Bucharest, Prague-Berlin-Copenhagen, Munich-Zurich, Munich-Vienna-Budapest, Munich-Milan-Rome, Hamburg-Göteborg...
Several night routes are also affected, including Paris-Milan-Venice, Stockholm-Copenhagen-Berlin and Amsterdam-Barcelona (with no stopover in France). It should be noted that the SNCF has so far decided to discontinue its Paris-Berlin night train in December due to the withdrawal of the €8 million subsidy from the State, which the national carrier was unwilling to compensate despite its €1.5 billion profit in 2024. But its new chairman, Jean Castex, a great fan of night trains in general and the Paris-Aurillac in particular, could reverse the decision taken by his predecessor Jean-Pierre Farandou, now Minister of Labour and Solidarity.
