Sagunto council calls on Spain to modernise rail infrastructure
Sagunto's city council has unanimously urged the Ministry of Transport to strengthen the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor on the Sagunto-Teruel section, days after the PP rejected the Government's rail proposal.
Sagunto's August plenary session closed with a unanimous message aimed at Madrid: every group on the council backed a motion demanding a rail network from the State that matches the industrial and port growth the town is experiencing. The vote comes just days after the local Partido Popular (PP) publicly rejected the Government's rail plan for the Teruel-Sagunto line, as this outlet reported earlier in the month.
The motion, tabled by the PP and defended in the chamber by councillor Sara Cañada, picked up amendments from Iniciativa Porteña, Compromís per Sagunt and EU-Unides Podem (left-leaning local parties) before the vote, which explains the council's full backing. The approved text asks the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility to update the Informative Study drawn up for the Sagunto-Teruel section of the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor, weighing alternatives that include a double, electrified track able to handle high-performance traffic.
On paper, the corridor is meant to link the Cantabrian coast — Santander and Bilbao as reference points — with the Mediterranean shore, crossing Aragón via Zaragoza and Teruel; it works as a cross-country alternative to the radial layout that dominates Spain's rail network and is included among the EU's Trans-European Transport Networks. The council's own agreement stresses that, within that corridor, Sagunto has become one of the heaviest-weight industrial, logistics and energy hubs in southern Europe.
Beyond calling for the technical review, the plenary requires the local government to draft its own submissions putting forward three arguments: the development of the Parc Sagunt industrial estate, the arrival of battery maker PowerCo, and the expansion of Puerto de Sagunto. The council also backs submissions that may be filed by the Valencian regional government, the region's business federation, the Port Authority of Valencia and other economic players, and calls on the Ministry to open a joint working group with ADIF (Spain's rail infrastructure manager), the regional government, the city council, the Port Authority and business representatives to design the corridor's next phases together.
The agreement also asks that freight be shifted from road to rail as a priority — cutting emissions in the process — provided passenger service does not suffer, and demands that ADIF and the Ministry publish a timetable with budget, phases and specific dates. Among the requests is finally extending Cercanías (commuter rail) service to Puerto de Sagunto, something the town's population growth makes increasingly necessary and which residents have been demanding for years. The council notes it already passed a similar institutional declaration in 2017, and the investment shortfall on this line has still not been corrected since then. According to aytosagunto.es and elperiodic.com, with additional information from Wikipedia.