Portugal and Spain have ruled out the possibility of changing the railway gauge, abandoning a plan whose main objective was to standardize train circulation between Europe and the Iberian Peninsula.
The operation to change the gauge would represent a cost of almost 260 million euros for Portugal, a value considered too high to proceed with the project.
With this decision, the ambition to fully integrate the Portuguese and Spanish railway network into the European standard, which uses a different gauge than traditionally used on the Iberian Peninsula, remains unfulfilled.
The failure to carry out this change means that train circulation between continental Europe and the Iberian Peninsula will continue to require the transfer of passengers and goods at the borders.
