They say that the deepest-rooted nightmares and the darkest traumas must be faced with integrity and determination, that it is better to face them directly than to hide them. That is why I propose that the only way to get rid of radial Spain is by delving into it. Or rather, literally digging into its epicenter. We were wrong to think that the radial distribution of rail services would be superseded by the construction of alternative lines that would stop running through the capital of Spain. No. On the contrary. As in the sport of judo, you have to take advantage of the weight, inertia and even the strength of the opponent to make him fall exactly where we wanted and with little energy invested on our part. And this has begun to happen just a few weeks ago with great hoarseness, let it be said, from the respectable public critical of radio Spain.
Before Christmas, Adif’s decision to transfer the head of the vast majority of rail services from Valencia and Alicante/Murcia to Madrid to the Clara Campoamor station, better known as Chamartín, was known. The traditional high-speed routes from Renfe to Puerta de Atocha ceased to be operational as a result of a small seven-kilometre tunnel that now lands us, together with the users of the private companies Ouigo and Iryo, in the shadow of the four enormous towers of the north of Madrid.
Complaints and regrets were heard in many areas and even for me, much more oriented to meridian traffic than to parallel ones, some well-known people stopped me to ask me for an explanation for such an alleged mess. The Paseo del Prado and the Reina Sofía, the Retiro and the Botanical Gardens were moving away from us, goodbye to Lavapiés and the Mercado de Antón Martín, we will no longer eat squid sandwiches in the Brillante…, and it’s true. But it must be understood that another, broader geography, with a deep regional and urban character, was approaching. Allow me, from this topic that might seem local, extract some general derivatives for this Iberian wheel.
The great problem of communications in Spain has not been Madrid as such, much less its inhabitants, but the so-called kilometer zero, which can still be seen at Puerta del Sol. For the sake of this cartographic and political invention, which is being Overwhelmed by the reality that we have been experiencing for decades, the Spanish transport network made radiality the first and almost unique logic of people transport services.
The invention of kilometer zero led to the radiality of people transport
The drama resided here. That as a Valencian he wanted to know the cathedral of Burgos? I had to get off in Madrid. That I wanted to go to Oviedo to drink a cider? I had to get off in Madrid. What did you want to eat a suckling pig in Segovia and see its aqueduct? I had to get off in Madrid. Madrid appeared to us as the alpha and omega of any rail destination in Spain.
The solution to this nonsense has been going deeper, as I said, into the core of the problem. Literally going under. Below kilometer zero, digging into the subsoil of the city. The tunnel that connects Atocha with Chamartín allows a Valencian, an Alicante or a Murcian to forget about Madrid today. In the blink of an eye, even if you pass through Madrid, you actually pass through Madrid. The change of preposition is all a political discourse. Never has a particle like this, of an intrinsically invariable character, changed the perception of what this country is and should be with more intensity.
The tunnel that connects Atocha with Chamartín allows a Valencian, for example, to forget about Madrid today
Keeping quiet and, let it be said, without the expected revelry and hubbub of the supporters, among whom I include myself, of a transversal Spain, on the advertising screens of my favorite Mediterranean stations new destinations have begun to accumulate that make it difficult the chose. The possible, comfortable and fast railway geography has multiplied, the atlas of places to travel to has grown thicker, the map of possibilities has expanded. Suddenly, the northern Castilian Plateau has opened up before the eyes of the Mediterranean traveler and Valladolid, Burgos, Segovia, Palencia and León begin to be glimpsed as reasonable destinations.
In the same way Asturias, with La Pola (de Lena), Mieres del Camín, Oviedo and Gijón, offer themselves to us so that, without lifting our body from the train seat beyond what is necessary, we get to know it: nine cities have joined in blow to the possible direct destinations from Valencia and two more, Torrelavega and Santander, from the sister city of Alicante, all without having to set foot in the Castellana. At the same time, another fifteen, Miranda de Ebro, Vitoria, Zumárraga, San Sebastián, Bilbao, Irun, Zamora, Ourense, Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Vilagarcía de Arousa, Pontevedra, Vigo, Medina del Campo and Salamanca, are easily reachable. : you get off a platform in Chamartín and on the next one you get on another train that takes you to your destination.
A transversal Spain begins to be woven that, passing through Madrid, actually passes through Madrid. The stage of renewed rail communications opens, a kind of high-speed 2.0, because Madrid’s connections with dozens of, generally, large cities within its radius of action have ended. Now, Valencia, Alicante or Murcia (and later other cities) are already linked not only to their peers, but to small and medium-sized cities, still surprised by the passage of a modern train that comes from afar and all without having to put one foot in the Puerta del Sol. At last the infrastructures begin to sew the Spain of the cities. And by the way, the public company that is Renfe has started.
A transversal Spain begins to be woven that, passing through Madrid, actually passes through Madrid
At this almost final point, I must apologize: this has not been an article to use. Rather, it has been a compendium of cities, a network of possible rail destinations that embodies an intertwined Spain. Goodbye to the iron threads of a suffocating ideology with its zero kilometer. Welcome to the paths of a broad view of a new relationship model that we must build culturally and socially speaking: Spain will be railway or it will not be. And this, more than a technical proposal, is purely political.
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