The trains I write for are much more than just a means of transportation. It means a different way of being in the world. For a long time, the railroad car was a symbol of companies that were developing and modernizing. Orlando Figes in his great work Los europeans. Three lives and the power of cosmopolitan culturehe claims it Thanks railway carriage a continental market was created for the culture and consciousness of “Europeans” through national identities. In order to limit and speed up the travel and transport of books, scores and works of art, it was possible for the first time to have a European culture of the masses outside of court elites. Yes, the train has always been a symbol of the greatest progress that has taken place in Europe and is loved by many people today.
The Adamuze accident cut short the lives of 46 people and left a scar in the social corpus that cannot be forgotten. For those who travel by train weekly, for those who travel, travel and sleep in carriages, there will always be a time before and after this Friday month of 26. Likewise, the human tragedy embodied in these deaths and in the decades of inheritance has sparked a debate around it Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) is safe if you will be able to fly for the joy of the Crown or, on the contrary, we will tend to comply with the impoverished service for the rest.
I retrieved my old writings from the time when I had thoughts on the subject of transport economics and devoted myself to an economic and social analysis of the costs and benefits of public inversions. And unfortunately I can confirm that those who study negative income – the minors who face the grandiose delirium of AVE enthusiasts – have unfortunately been confirmed.
175 years of historical error condensed into 33 years of high speed
Railway wagons arrived in Spain in 1848 on the Barcelona-Mataró line, but it was in 1851 that a decision was made that would mark Spain’s inefficiency for 175 years: The General Plan, which was designed to create red radial with Madrid as the absolute centerreacting to the centralism of Isabel II. It was not a technical, but rather a political decision.
The different route to the European one (1,672m vs. 1,435mm) was justified by the orography of the shoe, although even in those places it was questionable. The French capital (Rothschild, Pereire, Paribas), which financed all the reds, wanted to satisfy the Spanish governments, but above all they wanted to avoid the cost of Spanish products penetrating the French market.
Since the road and the model of the red radials were adapted for the different interests of the consensus between the French companies and the Spanish government, which, in addition to artificially forcing the deployment of the red, also turned into the original double sin of those who were not previously ours, we recovered: the road we wanted From Barcelona to Seville you must pass through Madrid. All the inefficiencies of the XXI century were written into the plans of the XIX century.
In 1992, when Spain inaugurated the AVE Madrid-Seville with a touch of European modernity, it undoubtedly inherited a century-old radial structure. Peor aún: he strengthened her. Three decades later, a serious mistake occurred. Ginés de Rus, mSpain’s highest authority on infrastructure cost-benefit analysisit was explained in 2015: according to strictly economic and social criteria, Spain should not build even one kilometer of high speed. A thorough 1993 report on the Madrid-Seville line concluded that the project should not be completed and that the costs were virtually irreversible. But when politics dictates, they call the numbers. And Spain continued to build kilometers of AVE as it would take a day.
The numbers of collective delirium
Governments of all colors will come to AVE to join forces in Spain and work with the G20 countries. Reading the newspaper library of the past decades is amazing. All governments are stamped with this infrastructure and no territorial management center that no demand in his city, in his province or even in his native village must stop AVEsign “España está de moda en el mundo”. But what do the numbers say and say?
The cumulative investment in the construction of the AVE between 1992 and 2024 reached 60,000 million euros. They built 3,974 kilometers of red with a unit price of 14.7 million euros per kilometer. A serious problem is solved here: for decades, the cost of annual infrastructure maintenance has been systematically ignored. We were buying Ferraris, but Nadie thought the game was expensive to maintain anyway.
It costs Spain (as the latest figures say) 437 million euros per year to maintain the AVE: 110,000 euros per kilometer per year, compared to the 58,000 euros found on conventional high-speed lines. When you calculate the real net value of the total costs over 50 years with a social contribution of 6 percent, each kilometer of the AVE is 16.4 million euros, while the fast conventional line 120-160 km/h is 4.9 million.
The AVE is 3.3 times more expensive per kilometer included in the large squarebecause the infrastructure is structurally more demanding to maintain. Would it be better to correct the historical error of the red radials and at the same time extend the good service of the expressways, not necessarily the balas, throughout the territory?
Operating income in 2024 illustrates the extent of the disaster: 21 million passengers annually generate 1,400 million euros at an average price of 66.7 euros per trip. Operating costs — personnel, energy, adif fee, administrative — amount to 1,950 million euros per year. The operating deficit is 550 million euros per year, including maintenance costs.
This means operators don’t have to hold onto their gas. There are many numbers that could be taken, but the summary of the Ginés de Rus studies is clear: Alta Velocidad Española has a negative structural profitability; social income (socially aggregated NPV) is also negative; the economic efficiency is worse than the construction of fast conventional alternative lines (e.g. 70% more expensive); is regressive in terms of distributive equality; and in terms of macroeconomic impact, it was neutral. Let’s say we are the social business of the world.
Phantom stations as part of the confession
So, if Ginés de Rus demonstrated it in 2015, would governments continue to build it? The response is in places like Guadalajara-Yebes, a “ghost station” 11 kilometers from the city center, in the middle of the city. Inaugurated in 2003 with a turnover of 11 million euros, it used only 213 passengers a day in its first years. Or the Cuenca station, with an occupancy of 15-20 per hundred squares. Or Puertollano with 8-12 percent. All were built for political acuerdos within regional governments mandated “on AVE”, not for rent.
The most recent episode is devastating: in June 2025, the mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero, announced that Renfe won the intermediate stops in Sanabria (Zamora), Medina del Campo and Segovia to gain 20 minutes on the Vigo-Madrid route. And he talked about it publicly. That shows what AVE’s operational decisions are always responded to to the criteria of polandticos, nunique ecoormicosand much less social.
When you want to turn into a mamba king
Spain was moving to the country with the highest kilometers of AVE in Europe and Alone It is from China to the world. This obsession, driven by all social and economic institutions, is completely irrational. In 2016, the European Court of Justice concluded that Spain had built an inefficient patchwork of poorly connected national lines, with €25,100 million overcharged on the lines examined. The Madrid-Galicia line costs 69.85 million euros for every minute of short travel, the most expensive of all comparisons.
Comparing international high-speed efficiency ratios, Spain has 11,000 passengers per km of line per year, while France has 59,000 and Germany 51,000. France devotes 34 percent of its gas to maintaining the existing red; Spain only favors the “short belt” in election cycles on the 16th of the month. result: we are therederes en kilAVE meters, but coils on request by kilosmeter.
There is something profoundly revelatory about this obsession with being the world’s most mileage. Keeping more miles was the same way of winning. Because development consists in accumulating infrastructures and not in serving people.
It’s the same logic that leads some countries to build Olympic stadiums that are then abandoned, or no-fly international airports (we’ve built some of them here). Confusion between middle and end, between equipment and goal.
An alternative plan that no one else wants to consider
Let’s imagine for a moment that Spain were to turn around now that’s 60,000 million euros in red (in a bag) evilconventional linespidas an average of 160 km/h on the radial AVE. Hubiéramos may be 5,500 kilometers instead of 3,974 kilometers, which is 38 hundredths of the territorial coverage; 35 million annual trips over 21 million, 67 per hundred more, so the fare could be 30-40 euros over 66, allowing access to all luggage. Much lower operating costs, less public subsidies, less deficits, plus positive impacts such as full freight compatibility generating additional revenue.
And to formulate it in an effective way, that is often true, in sum all territories: territorial cohesion. The transversals — the Mediterranean from Barcelona to Almeria, the Transcantábrico from Bilbao to Asturias, the Atlantic from Seville to Galicia — exceeded Madrid’s radial dependence. Conventional medium speed lines will link small and rural towns against devastationinstead of concentrating activity in just four or five major cities. France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany have shown that this alternative is better in terms of territorial cohesion and operational efficiency.
System errorANDmico s raandthese are deep
Spain’s AVE is a historical mistake: politically significant – because the AVE was a symbol of European modernity – but a disaster when viewed by all average economic and social indicators. We transferred 60,000 million euros from all Spanish users to ANDa dispute with a rent higher than 75 percent of the normal distribution of rent, while we develop education, R&D and infrastructure with Mayores multiplikadores de bienestar social. This is why the analysis of the cost of the social benefit of public inversion continues: the calculation of the opportunity cost and the redistributive impact.
The error is systemic. Spain is the worldnothing byeIt is European with no legal requirement for a mandatory cost-benefit analysis before rail inversionspp. This allowed electoral cycles and regional and local political presidency to obtain technical evidence. But it is also historic: the red radial, born in the mid-19th century thanks to political centralism and the determination of French builders, has never been replaced, allowing governments to return to the streets after 140 years. When I had the chance to fix it in 1992, I went with the legacy red radial. Error inertia. Yes, at least the AVE was built with the European road system. Less than a stone.
Spain chooses the most expensive, least fair and least effective solution. Adolescent obsession with the Mediterranean as a country in kilometers AVE is our monument of hope for progress: bright on the outside, empty on the inside, caring for everyone. And now non-existent again: we don’t have high speed in 2026 because none of these trains can run at the set speed. And yet he toyed with the lives of all travelers. It would be a question if it weren’t so dramatic.
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