Malaga city council accuses central government of prioritising Catalonian rail services over Costa del Sol

Transport

Conservative party spokesperson Elisa Pérez de Siles compared the 5.2 billion euros the government is investing in the orbital train in Barcelona to the stalled rail projects in Malaga

Pilar R. Quirós

Malaga

The coastal train (the Malaga-Marbella train) is almost a pipe dream for the residents of the Costa del Sol, who long to see these two large municipalities connected one day.

Marbella is the only major Spanish town (over 150,000 inhabitants) without a rail link. The rail between Malaga and Fuengirola launched on 1 August 1975, when a journey cost 20 cents. Since then, there have been some improvements to the service, but the long-awaited Malaga-Marbella connection has never become a reality.

This is why Malaga city's ruling team has decided to exercise its right to protest against what they consider is unfair treatment.

"The government has money for trains in Catalonia, but not for those in Malaga," PP party spokesperson Elisa Pérez de Siles said.

Pérez de Siles spoke from personal experience. On 18 May, she attended an event in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia (Barcelona) for the presentation of the orbital train: a 5.2-billion-euro project that will connect the municipalities of Barcelona's second metropolitan ring without requiring passengers to pass through the Catalan regional capital.

The new train line will be 120 kilometres long and have 40 stations. "We're not complaining about the project itself. We want the best infrastructure for the entire country. What we cannot allow is the injustice that Malaga and the Costa del Sol have been suffering for years," Pérez de Siles said.

For the local council meeting on Thursday, the PP plans an urgent motion to demand the coastal train. Pérez de Siles announced that they will remain firm in their demands for as long as they need to get the rail connection.

In January 2024, Unicaja Banco released a study, according to which "the best solution is to build and operate a new 47-kilometre rail line connecting the Cordoba-Malaga AVE high-speed line with Marbella, passing through the airport and the municipalities of Torremolinos, Benalmádena, Fuengirola and Mijas".

"The project includes the possibility of adding two branch lines with connections totaling approximately eleven kilometres," Pérez de Siles recalled.

According to the report's estimates, getting from Malaga Airport to Marbella could take just 22 minutes. The budget would be between 2.5 billion and 2.761 billion euros (excluding taxes).

The PP said that in February 2024, Minister of Transport Óscar Puente had stated that there were no documents concerning the coastal train, despite the report a month earlier.

In May 2025, the Ministry of Transport awarded the first study for the coastal train between Nerja and Algeciras. Despite expectations that the rail would be open in February this year, there has been no progress.

Pérez de Siles criticised the government for abandoning Malaga province. "There are people who used to regularly travel on the AVE high-speed train and who have now decided to switch to flying to be certain they will arrive in Madrid on time," she said.

"That a country like ours, which lives off the service sector, has such poor rail connections is deplorable. We have a third-world service," Pérez de Siles said. She highlighted that Malaga's commuter rail line is one of the most profitable in Spain, with 17 million passengers.

According to the spokesperson, the Spanish government collected over 6.358 billion euros in state taxes from the province of Malaga in 2025 alone. "They're fleecing us and we get nothing in return," Pérez de Siles said.