Government to invest over €700,000 on Marbella train study

THE Spanish government is only planning to invest €750,000 in the Cercanias train connection to Marbella between 2017 and 2018.

The sum, which will be allocated to studying the proposed infrastructure, has already been dismissed by the PSOE deputy for Marbella, Miguel Angel Heredia, who believes that the amount is insufficient for a project valued at “at least a billion euros”.

The train link, which will extend the Costa del Sol services to Marbella, was guaranteed by the Minister of Development during a visit to Malaga in 2012. Five years later, progress on the development has stalled.

The deputy urged the new mayor Ángeles Muñoz to pressure the government into spending more money on the Marbella train link, pointing out that Marbella is the only city in Spain with a population of more than 100,000 inhabitants that does not have these services.

The slow development of the project has been attributed to low funding for the Malaga 2017 State budget, which was announced earlier this year at around €138 million, some 40 per cent less than the region received last year.      

While funding is limited for projects on the Costa del Sol, the national government has just this month announced a €2 billion investment to improve the rail connections in the Valencia region, and work on a high speed train connection between Valencia and Barcelona has been scheduled to start in 2019.