 In the past 20 years, Spain has seen a railway engineering miracle, from a country that only had one significant high-speed railway, along with incredible technical challenges, to expansion into the world's second largest high-speed rail network, with technology brought from around the world, as well as massive innovations created right inside Spain. And when you consider the fact that the country has a modest population of 40 million people, it's obvious that it's the largest network in the world, per capita, by far, with nearly 4,000 kilometers of high-speed tracks. So let's talk about Spain, what makes it the world's leading country in high-speed rail, and how despite all of the challenges, the system was built in less than 20 years. If you live near a high-speed rail line, or regularly use high-speed rail service, that you want to see covered on the channel, particularly in Italy, France, Taiwan, or the UK, then send us an email because your system might be next. Despite the enormous amount of high-speed rail that's been built in the country, Spain's geography is not necessarily friendly to high-speed rail construction, where the long curves and relatively gentle grades preferred run up against the country's oft-mountainous terrain. In order for us to fully appreciate this, it's probably helpful to note the general geography of Spain. The country is located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula, and is dotted with mountains, particularly in the north and east. The country's largest city is Madrid, which is located highly centrally, and has a transit-explained video that you should definitely check out right after this one. Spain's second-largest city is Barcelona, which is only a little smaller than Madrid population-wise, and is located in the country's northeast on the Mediterranean coast. Rounding out the top 10 largest areas are Valencia, which also has a dedicated video, Malaga, Alicante, and Seville, most of which are either on or close to the Mediterranean, Bilbao, and the Oviedo, Jihán, Avieles region, which are in the country's north on the Atlantic, as well as Zaragoza, which is in the east of the country, halfway between Madrid and Barcelona. The country's difficult geography has been a major barrier that has required an incredible amount of large bridges and some tunnels to be built in order to create the network, but as a result of that great engineering effort, virtually all of Spain's major cities have high-speed rail service. And of the aforementioned top 10 urban areas, only the northern cities are not directly on a modern high-speed rail line, and even that won't necessarily be the case for long. For now though, let's take a look at the network of today. Right now, the Spanish high-speed rail network broadly looks like a large X, with Madrid at the center, and lines running out to the northwest, northeast to Barcelona and Zaragoza, southwest to Seville, and east to Valencia and Alicante. Of course, each individual leg has a number of branches, and in fact these southern and eastern legs have branches that are starting to trace the entire Mediterranean coast. The southwestern leg from Madrid to Seville is the oldest line in the network, starting in 1992, just one year after the ICE services first started in Germany, and it's generally certified to a slightly lower speed of 250 to 270 km per hour, as opposed to the 300 km per hour tracks now common in much of the country. And there are even islands of disconnected high-speed rail tracks not connected to major cities, at least right now, but we'll talk about those shortly. As it turns out, Madrid isn't actually at the very center of the X, but rather more on the northwest leg, and that means for a long time there were not through services from the northwest leg to the rest of the nation's high-speed rail network. Instead, passengers had to get off at Madrid's northern railway station, Cha Martín, hike it across town, and get on a different high-speed train at Atosia, Madrid's southern station. Fortunately, with the opening of the new cross-city high-speed rail tunnel, services can now run across the country, something which they previously did by sometimes completely bypassing Madrid to the south. You're probably curious if Spain has a cool name for its high-speed rail services like TGV or ICE, and indeed it does, AVE, which is even three letters to boot. It stands for Alta Velocidad Española, and the word AVE means bird, quite apt for a high-speed rail service across the country, I'd say. Speaking of the TGV, there are actually direct services onto the Spanish network by a number of TGV services, allowing for direct travel from Barcelona to Lyon, Paris, and Luz. In fact, as it turns out, on the Madrid to Barcelona corridor, there are a ton of different operators which compete with AVE and IRIO, owned by TranItalia, as well as two low-cost operators, SNCF's Wigo and Ronfei's Avlo service. This is all made possible by ERTMS, a European standard signaling system that is increasingly being used around the world and even allows freight trains to utilize some parts of the high-speed rail network, making for a complex operation. What's interesting about Spain is that like fellow high-speed rail nation Japan, its legacy railway network is not standard gauge, but rather the broad 1668 millimeter Iberian gauge. This created a lot of challenges due to Spain's desire to connect to neighboring France's high-speed rail network, which is standard gauge, but also opportunities. Because unlike Japan's narrow gauge mainline railways, Iberian gauge is actually capable of handling high-speed trains since it's so broad. Because of this, some services that might be called high-speed were actually created before standard gauge high-speed rail lines were broadly available. One example of this is the higher-speed corridor from Placencia to Perajus, and another exists along the Mediterranean with the EuroMed service, which once operated TGV-derived trains using Iberian gauge. Now, to be clear, Spain has, for the most part, not built out an Iberian gauge high-speed rail network. Most new and upgraded lines use standard gauge and 25KV AC power, whereas some other mainlines use 3,000 volts DC. So while not all high-speed rail lines are standard gauge, most standard gauge lines are high-speed. But this poses a problem. How can connections be made to cities that aren't on the standard gauge high-speed rail network, like Santander and Bilbao? And how can Iberian gauge trains, still running to many parts of the country, benefit from the high-speed rail lines that have been built? The answer is pretty amazing. Gauge-changing trains, and not just gauge-changing, in motion gauge-changing high-speed trains. And these are actually a well-proven technology at this point in Spain, so they aren't just some funky gadget-bond technology. No, this is an incredible piece of technology. Essentially, throughout the country, there are stations, where trains running on the legacy Iberian gauge network can change gauge to operate on standard gauge tracks. Some of the time, this is to travel into France, which has a standard gauge network, but a lot of the time, it is to allow trains within Spain to change to standard gauge to operate over a high-speed line, before changing back to Iberian gauge, often on different Alvia or Avant-branded services. A great example can also be seen on the Euromed service, where gauge-changing trains allow for high-speed services to operate increasingly on dedicated, newly-built high-speed rail lines, while still using traditional Iberian gauge tracks where necessary. As a commenter on a previous version of this video mentioned, sometimes a section of tracks using Iberian gauge will even be completely rebuilt to higher-speed standards with wider curves than the like, but not converted to standard gauge until other infrastructure that legacy traffic can use comes online. And sometimes, rebuilds will actually use sleepers that have space left for standard gauge rail spacing to be used in the future, in a brilliant stroke of future-proofing. All of this has allowed a more piecemeal build-out of the high-speed rail network, allowing new high-speed bypass lines to sometimes be built and used without being immediately connected to the rest of the high-speed rail network. Now, to be clear, the gauge-changing trains are speed-limited to 250 kilometers per hour, due to the complicated nature of the gauge-changing mechanisms in the bogies. And they can't take complete advantage of high-speed rail infrastructure compared to regular standard gauge trains, but as opposed to having to use legacy lines, these are a big step up. And they're actually even tests underway for trains that can hit the full 300 kilometer-per-hour top speed on most high-speed rail lines and have gauge-changing. Now, how do the gauge-changers actually work, you ask? Well, the stations are located throughout the country at more than 10 different sites, at transition or connection points between key Iberian gauge and standard gauge lines. The system is really cool because the train doesn't need to stop to pass through it. They just need to slow to very low speeds, and unlike what's the case with earlier technologies, you can have gauge-changing multiple units and locomotives, so the train truly never has to stop. Initially, different technology was developed by the two main rolling stock manufacturers in Spain, Tago and Cap, but the newest gauge-changers can actually work with either type of train. Now, the natural question to ask is, how did Spain pull this grand expansion off? It's often said as an assumption that Spain has gone into crippling debt by spending an unthinkable amount of money on high-speed rail lines to all corners of the country. But the truth is, Spain didn't build an amazing network by spending an inconceivable amount. They did it with shockingly good engineering and project management. This means new high-speed rail lines in Spain are often built at a tenth of the cost of a high-speed project like High-Speed 2 in the UK and just a fifth of the cost of California high-speed rail. In fact, even China can't match Spain's efficiency here. A lot of this was achieved using the piecemeal approach I mentioned before, building sections of the network that could be completed cost-effectively while studying and executing more complex projects like the cross-majored tunnel over longer time spans. Spain also benefits from public institutions like Ronfei, the national rail operator, and Edith, the national infrastructure operator, both of whom have tons of experience with big projects, as well as a booming construction market, which is why Spanish engineering and construction companies are building infrastructure all over the world, from Vancouver to Mexico City to London. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that Spain has built a highly radial network. Minimizing the amount of times extremely complex city approaches need to be built. One place the Spanish high-speed rail network falls down a bit is ridership. The system has much less intensive per kilometer ridership than other major countries in Europe, but that's probably to be expected. Spain is a smaller country than, say, France and has a lot more high-speed rail per capita. Most of its high-speed rail lines are also just much newer, so they haven't had the time to attract significant ridership and change people's travel habits. The network also somewhat suffers from its Madrid-centered layout, with less direct services to and from Barcelona, which lead to less ridership coming out of that region of the country. And, unfortunately, one policy that's quite unlikely to attract riders is airport-style security implemented at stations. While it is well-intentioned, it likely isn't all that useful and significantly worsens the travel experience. Another problem that does rear its head, especially as you look at high-speed rail stations in smaller and smaller Spanish cities, is that the high-speed rail stations are often sort of in the middle of nowhere, like people often talk about with high-speed rail. This is, of course, in part because you can't build new lines too close to existing urban areas in order to build cost effectively and without setting off a nimby storm. And that means intermediate stations are often far from the area they are meant to serve, sometimes with no shuttle buses and nothing but a big parking lot at the station. The situation is only made worse by the fact that the optimal corridor for high-speed services often already taken by a lower-speed Iberian gauge corridor, hopefully with the improved gauge-changer technology and newly developed gauge-change trains in the Taugall of Vril family that can handle 300 kilometers per hour, this problem will fade and some services can use legacy lines to get closer into cities. You're probably curious about what trains the network actually uses and what I find fascinating is that it's a total mix of different rolling stock from across Europe, including TGV and ETR-derived rolling stock from Alstom, German Siemens-Villaro rolling stock and Spanish trains from Taugall and Bombardier. Now, while the older Taugall trains do look quite silly, they're actually nicknamed Pato or the duck, the newer gauge-changing sets are actually really good-looking in my opinion. I also find it fascinating that there's a good mix of locomotives and multiple-unit trains, whereas much of the rest of the world, besides France, has moved all towards multiple units, albeit my contacts in Spain have suggested that something similar is going to happen in Spain soon. At the end of the day, much like with actually building high-speed rail lines, Spain wasn't afraid to first import something good and then tweak it to make it even better. One thing that's quite amazing about the incremental build-out and interconnected dual-gauge nature of Spain's national railway network is that you get crazy junctions where high-speed and Iberian gauge lines come together and cross one another, sometimes to serve the same station, such as at Antequera, Santa Ana, Northwest of Milaga. And as you'd probably expect, given the incredible efficiency of high-speed rail construction in Spain, there are a lot more projects coming. Some new lines are really just upgrades and conversions of older Iberian gauge lines, which means that the days for gauge changers are likely numbered, as conversions and extensions continue to happen. Just some of the places getting connected to new under construction high-speed rail lines include Bilbao, San Sebastian, and the Asturias. The islanded section of high-speed line from Placencia to Badajoz is also going to be integrated and connected to the rest of the network. There are also very interesting new circumferential connections that will more or less enable direct travel with high-speed service, not only from most cities to Madrid, but also someday to Barcelona. These include corridors from Valencia to Alicante, Zaragoza to Pamplona, and Granada to Cadiz. There are also plans in Madrid itself to connect the Ave network directly to Barajas Airport, potentially allowing international travelers headed to Spain to get on a train direct to their final destination right at the airport. It's also likely that someday in the future, another Northern connection between the French and Spanish high-speed rail networks, this time in Northern Spain, using the TGV South Europe Atlantic line and parts of the line to Toulouse on the French side will be completed. And this will allow more international service, including likely from Paris to Madrid. I'm also fond of the rather out there idea of a tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco. This would allow intercontinental high-speed rail services onto the Moroccan high-speed rail system, which was developed with standards similar to a French TGV. Given the relative narrowness of the Strait and the fact that the high-speed lines already are fairly close to the water on both sides, this actually seems like something which could eventually happen. So long as the technicalities are figured out, especially as this line would end up crossing different tectonic plates. As always, with high-speed rail explained videos, I wanna mention Spain's attempts at exporting high-speed rail technology. And these days, they aren't just attempts, but successes, and in more than one area. For one, Spain built the infrastructure for Saudi Arabia's high-speed rail line from Medina to Mecca via Jeddah. And though riddled in controversy, this was no simple feat because of the extreme heat and desert conditions this line has to pass through. This also tees up another area where exports have been successful, trains. Not only has Talgo successfully exported trains to Saudi Arabia, but they've also sold some to a private operator called LaTran, which is going to be using them at France. Spanish rail manufacturer CAF has also sold high-speed trains internationally, including to Turkey, and its burgeoning high-speed rail network, as well as to Norway for use on the Oslo air rail link, which I covered in my Oslo T-Bain video. Spain's high-speed rail operational expertise have also been exported, with Ronfei being selected as the operator for the embattled Texas Central High-speed Rail Line among other projects internationally. While all of these successes are great, I think the most important thing to export from Spain's high-speed rail network doesn't really have to do with high-speed rail at all, and it's the automatic gauge-changer technology. While its relevance might be going down in Spain in other parts of the world, from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia and even India, which notably has railways of a similar gauge to Spain, gauge changers could be absolutely transformational, allowing railways that have traditionally only been weakly connected to come together in a way not previously imagined. In summary, Spain is a true powerhouse of high-speed rail, and it's not only connected to nation, but one day it might just connect the entire world. A huge thank you to Interregios, Andrey, Ikein, and the rural urbanist for their footage used in this video.