Renfe’s Parisian dream is a little further away today. After 13 years of obstacles, the Government seems to have resigned itself to the fact that the expansion of the Spanish railway operator into France is stuck. This was confirmed yesterday by Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport, while announcing that the interconnection with Portugal will be accelerated as compensation: “We have to analyze reality and not insist on things that seem difficult, so we are changing our ideas, focusing them towards Portugal,” he warned.
Renfe was supposed to have reached the French capital before the 2024 Olympics, but it never happened. And today, amid the reputational crisis of the Spanish network, that promise is even further away. It all goes back to the alliance started in 2013 with the French state company SNCF. While the French parent company maintained a 98% dominance in its own railway market, its low-cost subsidiary, Ouigo, began operating freely on Spanish corridors in May 2021. This scenario consolidated an obvious asymmetry that did not benefit Renfe, which today still operates autonomously only in southern France, limited to the Lyon and Marseille lines.
In this context, neither the pressure exerted from Brussels, not only on France but also on Italy and Germany, to speed up this liberalization of their railway networks had positive results for Spain. Something the minister undoubtedly pointed out in his statements: “Both countries clearly have the goal of being connected through the railway network, but in the case of France, the pressure applied in Europe to boost its connections with Spain has been of very little use,” he said in an interview with Europa Press.
This whole transfer became a perfect storm in which, on one hand, the minister denounced this lack in previous years accusing Paris of delaying the approval of the Talgo S106 train. And on the other, that the train manufacturer maintained delays in delivering its trains which resulted in a 116 million euro fine imposed by Renfe due to delays in the delivery of the series and that currently, there is a two-year delay in the reception of the series 107. A problem where, according to Puente, delivery times are already around six years.
However, the minister reiterated his intentions to approve these two series indicating that “they are models very adaptable to the Portuguese environment, which is partly Iberian gauge like Spain and we are trying to homologate them to be able to work there”.
All in all, the minister pointed out that the Portuguese country is on the verge of developing its high-speed network and “it is a territory where we will work much more comfortably and we will have a simpler entry“, he considered.
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However, this retreat coincides with a reputational crisis that the Spanish railway network is suffering after a series of technical incidents and, moreover, one of them caused the tragic Adamuz accident which ended with multiple fatalities.
Consequently, these breakdowns have dragged down demand causing a loss of 1.2 million High-Speed users in the last year-on-year quarter, in a record year for tourism. A fact that weakens Puente’s position, who even before these failures had launched criticisms against the operation of Ouigo, accusing the company of unfair competition due to low ticket prices.
All the same, the ministry avoids giving the definitive door slam. Puente reiterated the commitment to have both connections ready by 2030, conditioning the success of the plan on Paris agreeing to Spanish trains and Lisbon accelerating the development of its infrastructures.
Something that the European Commission also referred to in October 2025, to complete the high-speed rail connection between Madrid and Lisbon by 2030, with the idea that by 2034 the journey will take at least three hours.
