the train of High Speed I Felipe VI y Pedro Sanchez will open this Monday it has taken 19 years and four days to reach Murcia since the former Secretary of State for Infrastructure Benigno Blanco laid the first two sleepers of the new line on December 15, 2003. Three months later there were general elections and the Government of Jose Maria Aznar He was in a hurry to start taking advantage of an investment project that was going to be the star of his show.
The number two of Álvarez-Cascos Ministry staged the start-up of the new line in a place in the Murcian district of Alquerías, in the heart of the orchard, accompanied by the then mayor of Murcia, Miguel Angel Chamberthe former government delegate José Joaquín Peñarrubia and by Joaquín Bascuñanawho was the Minister of Public Works.
As a symbol of the start of the work, they placed a monolith on which the date of the event appeared, the December 15, 2003, although it was withdrawn immediately afterward. It may even have been used in some other similar act during the electoral campaign.
The agreement reached by the former president Ramon Luis Valcarcel in January 2001 with the minister and with the presidents of the other autonomous communities through which the Madrid-Castilla La Mancha-Valencian Community-Region of Murcia high-speed line would pass, he had cleared the way to place Murcia at the end of the chosen route , forgetting the regional aspiration to connect with Madrid through Cieza.
Former Secretary of State Benigno Blanco was in charge of bringing the commemorative monolith
Once the renewal of the natural connection from Cartagena to Chinchilla had been ruled out, all the investment could be directed towards carrying the AVE to Valencia and Alicantewith the approval of the then President of the Generalitat, Eduardo Zaplana from Cartagenawho had the support of his counterpart from Castilla-La Mancha, José Bono.
The manchego left the meeting of Saint Stephen presuming that he had managed to get the AVE to pass through all the provinces of his community, since Ciudad Real was already on the line from Madrid to Seville. The chronicles of the time say that Bono had invited the president of the Generalitat at the Albacete Fair and that the alliance between both presidents was sealed during a bullfight.
For his part, Zaplana managed to take a free line in which the Valencian businessmen were willing to put money. In fact, the Valencian employers had come to ask a few years before the support of Croem so that the private initiative of the Region join the project in order to have more weight when presenting their claim to the central government.
The then president of Croem, Thomas ZamoraHe replied that the Region wanted to go to Madrid the way it had always gone, because it was also the shortest alternative and avoided the waste of time and kilometers that the aspiration to Valencia entailed.
Valcárcel also said then that the AVE would arrive in Murcia naturally when the line to Alicante was renewed, whose electrification had also been planned for a long time, although it had been paralyzed while waiting for the High Speed plans to materialize.
The reasons why the former Murcian president accepted that the chinchilla line relegated to freight traffic remain unknown.
However, the claim of the Ministry of Public Works and Renfe had always been to carry Trains from Murcia to Madrid via Alicante.
Los State’s general budgets they had begun to include the first batches for the construction of the Camarillas variant since the early 90s, but they were not executed. The first project to move the railway line away from the swamp was drafted when Joseph Borrell He was Minister of Public Works.
In fact, the last socialist government that preceded Valcárcel in the Community had to sign an agreement with Renfe and put money to cover the deficit of the Talgo that were circulating at the time. However, the trains began to fill up in a short time and it was necessary to put more frequencies, so they stopped costing the Region money.
The Government of the PP was aware that going to Madrid through Alicante was a grievance for Murcia and that is why Mariano Rajoy He dropped at an electoral rally in March 2004, when he aspired to succeed Aznar, that “the AVE would arrive in Murcia through Cieza and Albacete.”
The paradox is that Rajoy lost the elections, but the Zapatero government began building the Camarillas variant as a first phase of the modernization of the Chinchilla line.
At the same time, the socialist government also started the platform on which the tracks of the AVE between Beniel and Murcia. The expropriations posed great difficulties due to the opposition of the residents, but in 2011, when Rajoy finally arrived at La Moncloa, both sections were ready to start laying the tracks.
Nevertheless, the works did not advance at the same pace than in the Valencian Community, because the section of Callosa de Segura was especially conflictive and it was necessary to make a tunnel to avoid the passage of the new tracks through the Vega Baja.
The AVE arrived in Valencia in December 2010 and was inaugurated in Alicante in June 2013.
Neither the Murcia City Council nor the Community applied to make the progress of the roads possible, which required the diversion of sewerage pipes, irrigation and all kinds of supplies. Adif built a surface road with the promise later to build an underground route, but the vote of no confidence that ousted Rajoy caused a change in the Ministry’s plans and work began on the tunnel and the construction of the new station.
The Pro Subterranean Platform managed to get the train underground
The bird will enter the Carmen station by an underground track, which has ended the physical barrier imposed by the railway in the southern neighborhoods of the city of Murcia. The construction of the tunnel that has made it possible to eliminate the Santiago el Mayor level crossing and convert the old 19th century route into a pedestrian walkway has been possible thanks to the efforts of a group of residents, who for three decades have claimed burying.
Las aspirations of the southern neighborhoods they ended up imposing themselves on the plans of Adif and the Ministry and have led to a change in the urban physiognomy of the city that was not painted in any urban plan, although the political parties ended up assuming it over time and incorporating it into their programs.
The construction of the tunnel through which the tracks run has freed up a section of almost seven kilometers and has created a pedestrian artery from Nonduermas to the Senda de los Garres, which opens the city to the neighborhoods closest to the South Coast.
At first the Underground Platform It was a silent collective, which gathered every Tuesday and punctually attended political calls and institutional acts with its banner. And it was like this until the AVE tracks began to materialize physically in front of the houses and the wall that was to isolate the High Speed line was erected in front of the doors of the houses to prevent the invasion of the new railway line.
From then on, the Tuesday meeting became a social movement that gradually gained support and turned its claim into an aspiration of the city. for months They demonstrated through the streets of Murcia reciting slogans against the screens that Adif erected in front of their houses. Pink Floyd’s song The Wall (El muro) was a hymn that encouraged solidarity inside and outside the Region, since the Platform has been a benchmark for residents of other cities.
Their calls came to inflame spirits and on some occasion they had toand face even the police deploymentbut his peaceful character always prevailed.