History
The first railway line in Iberia was built in 1848 between Barcelona and Mataró In 1852 the first narrow gauge line was built; in 1863 a line reached the Portuguese border. By 1864 the Madrid-Irun line had been opened, and the French border reached.
In 1911 the first line to be electrified was the Gergal-Santa Fe line.
In 1941 RENFE was created.
The last steam locomotive was withdrawn in 1975, in 1986 the maximum speed on the railways was raised to 160 km/h, and in 1992 the Madrid-Seville high speed line opened, beginning the process of building a nationwide high speed network.
The current plans of the Spanish government plans to link all the provincial capitals with high speed rail, with a total estimated length of over 9000 km of high-speed railways for 2020.
Read more about this topic: Rail Transport In Spain
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)