upply — 2026-04-30
Land transportation
Long penalised by a specific railway gauge, Spain is accelerating its integration into the European network. Several major projects launched in Spain are paving the way for increased rail traffic with the rest of Europe, with intermodal traffic being the main driver.
Neighbouring countries, separated by the physical barrier of the Pyrenees mountain range (430 km), Spain and France maintain intense trade relations. For obvious geographical reasons, the French territory is also the essential transit route for land-based trade between Spain and other countries of the European Union (excluding Portugal). In 2025, the EU 27 accounted for 62% of all Spanish exports, and 49.4% of its imports.
The figures published by the Franco-Spanish Observatory of Traffic in the Pyrenees (OTP), which cover the year 2023, show the following situation:
In all cases, the weight of rail transport is negligible. It represents less than 1% of the total transport flows between Spain and Europe as a whole.
This situation is historically explained by the difference in track gauge between the Spanish railway network (1,668 mm) and the rest of the European network (1,435 mm, so-called "standard" or UIC gauge). In Spain, however, a historic decision has begun to move things forward: the choice to build high-speed rail lines (HSR) with standard gauge. The first one, Madrid-Seville, entered service in 1992. A large-scale transformation was then initiated. In 2024, 70.5% of the Spanish rail network was Iberian gauge, compared to 80.6% in 2010; 21.9% was standard or mixed gauge, with the remaining 7.6% being metric gauge, according to a report by the National Markets and Competition Commission.
The development potential of combined transport
The Spanish strategy is part of a broader framework, that of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) which concerns Spain. This Spanish commitment to infrastructure is accompanied by a desire to develop rail freight, which represents less than 4% of land freight transport, one of the lowest ratios in the EU.
A renewed interest in intermodality
The Spanish government's "Goods 30" plan, aimed at reviving rail freight transport, plans to increase the share of rail in land freight transport to 10% in 2030 compared to 3.6% in 2021.
Several initiatives have been implemented to encourage modal shift, including:
The development of rolling roads (ROLA): Adif has defined a series of axes, the most important of which concerns a future "line" between Algeciras and Zaragoza via Madrid (1,074 km in total). Track adaptation work is ongoing. In June 2025, the first Spanish rolling road between the port of Valencia and Madrid, entered service. A second link between Valencia and Portugal has been operational since January 2026, the Lusophone neighbour having the same track gauge. All these projects include an Iberian gauge.
The creation of a network of 7 priority intermodal platforms: Adif has chosen seven main hubs: Barcelona (La Llagosta); Valencia (Fuente de San Luis), Madrid (Vicalvaro), Valladolid, Seville (Majarabique), Vitoria (Jundiz) and Zaragoza (Plaza). A major investment program has been launched thanks to European funding from the NextGenerationEU initiative.
Traffic remains modest
These initiatives, launched at the beginning of this decade, have not borne much fruit so far. But This difficult context should not obscure the existence of regular, high-occupancy cross-border intermodal connections, which demonstrate the existence of demand and therefore a market (...)