It will be at the dawn, in the middle or at the end of 2020. It will take almost three years for the Extremaduran railway to take the first step towards what must be a modern and fast future that resists arriving in the region, but throughout that period. The first high-performance trains will (predictably) pass through Extremadura each year and the region will begin to be less than three hours from Madrid, from Cáceres, or four in the case of Badajoz. For the (real) AVE, we will have to wait a lot longer, but the central executive now assures that the high-speed route that will link Madrid and Lisbon is a priority and that is what Minister Íñigo de la Serna transferred this week to the chief executive regional, Guillermo Fernández Vara, in an institutional meeting where he flew over the shadow of the protest on November 18 in Madrid to claim a decent train.
To shorten deadlines, the first thing that must be committed are funds with which to promote the works that are underway, without leaving behind the start-up of the works on the Castilla La Mancha route, where the Madrid-Lisbon AVE hardly exists. Therefore, the first thermometer on which to measure the course of the minister’s words will be the 2018 General State Budgets, which should include an increase of at least 40% in the items destined for the route between Badajoz and Plasencia, in order to keep the dates set now with guarantees.
“I think that the deadlines that the minister has given are short, but if he says they can do it, it will be necessary to see if this is the case or if, as always happens, we are leaving for a few more years,” says Ángel Caballero, president of the Association. Friends of the Railroad Extremadura and one of the voices that have risen the most against the abandonment of Extremadura rail transport. For Caballero, “I very much doubt” that in 2020 the line will be electrified: “I feel it in my soul, I would like to say the opposite, but I don’t see it,” he stresses.
