Iberia’s North and South concerned about future cross-border rail

Porto-Vigo and Faro-Seville are the northern and southern future high-speed rail links between Portugal and Spain. However, the political willingness is not meeting technical calendars. On the northern side, there are more delays expected, and it could take more than a decade until the works are complete; on the southern side, mayors influenced the Transport EU Commissioner to pressure the Spanish government to accelerate the calendar and not wait until 2050.

Portugal and Spain’s local and regional politicians are getting more concerned about the future high-speed cross-border network. The lack of progress on the planned rail links outside of the Lisbon-Madrid corridor is becoming a headache for people’s representatives. Announced at the 2003 Iberian summit, the links between Porto and Vigo and between Faro and Seville were halted for almost two decades. At the beginning of this decade, the projects were resumed, however.

For the Northern link, the Portuguese infrastructure manager (IP) announced that construction would be finished by the end of 2030, according to a September 2022 presentation. High-speed trains would travel from Porto to Galicia’s largest city in just one hour, less than half of the current time. Last July, however, IP announced a two-year delay, with construction set to finish in 2032.

For the Southern new track, the Iberian commitment is weaker and more recent. In the latest Iberian summit, in October 2024, both countries resumed the necessity of cost-benefit analyses and studies on mobility flows between Faro and Huelva, according to the official declaration. Later, in March 2025, the Portuguese government demanded that IP promote the necessary studies between the two cities. Despite the announcements, both projects seem stuck, particularly on the Portuguese side.

Porto-Vigo

The political conflict is more intense for the rail link from Porto to Vigo, in the north. Last week, Porto’s mayor, Pedro Duarte, met with the president of the Regional Government of Galicia (Xunta de Galicia), Alfonso Rueda. In the end, both demanded to meet the calendar already established. “I do not see any reason not to believe” in the deadline already established, said Porto’s mayor after the meeting. The Spanish Government is hiding behind “supposed delays in Portugal to not do anything,” the regional leader added.

Galicia’s Presidency councillor, Diego Calvo, reinforced Rueda’s statement last Tuesday. In the regional parliament, the representative mentioned the accumulated delays on the project for the Vigo station south exit and the stretch between O Porriño and the Portuguese border made it impossible to fulfil the calendar established by the national government. Not before 2038, Calvo mentioned during the speech.

Vigo’s mayor, Abel Caballero, reacted hours later to the statements from Galicia. “We knew when Rueda met with Portuguese ministers and mayors saying the project would be finished in 2030, it would be a lie, barbaric, and pretending the impossible,” he said to local media. Criticism was also aimed at the Portuguese government: “It is not going to be ready because of Portugal; they will not do it on time and at the speed that Spain can make it,” Rueda added. It is worth saying that Rueda and Caballero are on opposite political sides, with Rueda representing the Conservative party (PP) and Caballero the Socialists (PSOE).

Calvo’s statement also triggered Eixo Atlantico, the association of municipalities from the north of Portugal and across the border in Galicia. “It is unacceptable that the Xunta de Galicia leader releases alarming information to the press without going public with any supporting study. We want to know the real data because this situation can generate confusion and disappointment among citizens,” protested the Eixo Atlantico’s secretary general, Xoán Mao.

What is Portugal doing?

On the Portuguese side, IP started the geotechnical analysis at the end of 2025, and the environmental study was assigned in April 2024, with a deadline of 600 days (one year and 10 months). From the first studies to the work’s conclusion, it needs to be considered a period of seven years, according to the Portuguese infrastructure manager. From Porto and Vigo, the project includes new train stations in Porto’s airport, Braga, Ponte de Lima and Valença.

With the new rail track to Vigo, Porto will also get closer to other cities in the Galicia region: Santiago de Compostela could be reached in two and a half hours (instead of the current five hours and a train change) and Coruña in three hours (instead of the current five and a half hours). This would make the train a real competitor compared to the car, which lasts more than three hours.

Faro-Seville

If the North of Portugal and Spain are concerned about another delay, the opposite occurs in the South, concerning the future link between Faro and Seville, which are not connected via rail. Last Tuesday, the Spanish mayors of Seville and Huelva went to Brussels and asked the EU’s Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzizikostas to accelerate the execution of this new rail connection and provide access to European funding, according to local media.

The Greek Commissioner agreed to mediate the situation with the Spanish counterpart. Last year, Transport Minister Óscar Puente claimed that 2050 would be the deadline following the EU’s recommendation. Puente also mentioned that Portugal currently “has zero kilometres of high-speed tracks” and that the “priority is linking Lisbon to Porto”.

The Seville and Huelva mayors left the meeting with a positive outlook. “There are possibilities to accelerate the AVE [name of high-speed trains in Spain] arrival, and we will explore different tools to complete it”, the delegation said. For Huelva’s mayor, Pilar Miranda, the delay of the project is the Spanish government’s fault: “Unfortunately, they are delaying AVE until 2050,” claimed the politician from PP.

Not part of TEN-T (yet)

The delegation also reinforced the necessity of adding the Faro-Seville rail track to the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). This would prioritise the connection and open the door to EU funding, as is happening with the rail links Porto-Vigo, Lisbon-Porto, Lisbon-Madrid and Aveiro-Salamanca (even if this project is uncertain due to the Porto-Madrid project). Faro’s mayor, António Miguel Pina, is also supporting the project.

Right now, there is no rail link between Faro (Algarve) and Seville (Andalusia). In the Algarve, the closest train station to the border is Vila Real de Santo António. Then, passengers either have to find a boat or have to take the bus to reach Spain. On the Spanish side of the border, there is no rail link between Ayamonte and Huelva, and there is a conventional connection to Seville. The high-speed link would benefit the connection within the Southern Iberian region and promote more sustainable mobility in this territory, which mostly depends on road transportation.

Last October, the Spanish Government assigned the project to build a new link between Huelva and Seville. With 95.5 kilometres of extension and a 350 km/h speed limit, the new rail track, in standard gauge, would cost more than €1.6 billion and link both cities in only 25 minutes, almost two-thirds less than the current situation of one and a half hours. From the Portuguese side, there is not a single update over the last year.

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