Homage to Spain’s railways: take the slow train for the best scenic routes

Spain excels in high-speed lines, but visitors will discover so much more on older tracks winding through deserts, sierras, sleepy villages and George Orwell country

Spain was a slow starter with trains. Its first tracks, between Mataró and Barcelona, covering about 20 miles, were laid in 1848, 18 years after the world’s first intercity line, between Manchester and Liverpool. And because a different track gauge was selected from the “standard gauge” of most of the rest of Europe (partly owing to fear of the new railways being used by an invader), this led to a longstanding requirement to change trains at the French border, resulting in huffy passengers and a stagnation in trade.

Railway tracks, some still serviced by steam trains, did cover most of the country by the time of Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, although Spain was by then way behind France, where the inaugural high-speed TGV line, between Paris and Lyon, was to open in 1981.