The decline of Asturias’ rail service and the Feve saga
The railway line in Asturias is deteriorating. As reported by La Nueva España, part of the Prensa Ibérica group, the metric gauge line once known as Feve has shed about 70% of its users this century, now serving just over five hundred thousand passengers annually. Daily ridership sits roughly 600 below the long-term average since 2005, equating to what many call an ongoing evacuation of a once vital link. Experts point to a缺乏 investment, aging wagons, and aging infrastructure, plus the troubled integration of Feve into Renfe and Adif, as the core drivers of the line’s decline. Add in a public goodbye from political leaders who stopped backing the metric gauge, and the result is a stalled service with little political will to renew it. A fresh blow arrived with the so-called fevemocho scandal, triggered by more than two years of delays in producing 31 metric-track trains, driven by mismatches between Renfe’s needs and tunnel dimensions in Asturias and Cantabria.
The beginnings of the Feve train project trace back to four years ago, on 11 February 2019, when Renfe invited bids to manufacture 31 metric-track trains. Two proposals were opened a month later, and the €196.3 million contract was finally awarded on 30 June 2020 to Construcciones y Auxiliar del Ferrocarril SA (CAF). The wait stretched out to more than a year and three months from the initial tender, a delay that set the stage for broader frictions in the project.
A further six months passed before Renfe, Isaías Táboas, CAF’s Andrés Arizkorreta, and other stakeholders signed the agreement on 29 December 2020. Significantly, the signing occurred before the official award was published in February, a timing that experts in the rail sector deem unusual. October 4, 2021, is cited as another irregular moment in the tender process for public administration projects.
In March 2021, the discrepancy between the trains’ dimensions and the tunnel sizes was confirmed. The root cause is not simply that the new trains wouldn’t fit historic tunnels; it’s that they would violate minimum side and roof clearances set by current regulations. In other words, the proposed trains would have to be far smaller—much smaller than existing models—to comply. As a result, the design process halted abruptly.
Who discovered the problem? The specifics aren’t openly disclosed. Some sources indicate that those with prior Feve‑train experience were CAF and Renfe operators. The fault was acknowledged, but no decisive action followed for six months.
In September 2021, a joint meeting involving Renfe, Adif, the Ministry of Transport, and the State Railway Safety Agency (AESF) settled on a workaround: apply the so-called “comparative method” by copying the dimensions of the most capable trains already running on Feve lines. Specifically, the Renfe 3600 series units, in service on four Asturian metric-track suburban routes for nearly two decades, were used as the reference model.
Once the problem was identified and the proposed fix laid out, the question remained: why was there little progress from September 2021 until the public controversy erupted? Part of the explanation lies in the Angrois disaster near Santiago de Compostela in 2013, when a derailment killed 80 people and injured 144. That tragedy reshaped the Spanish rail industry and tightened oversight on new builds.
In response to the accident, the government moved quickly to strengthen oversight. The AESF began operating on 1 April 2015 and soon approved a Gauge Railway Order on 14 April 2015, establishing maximum wagon dimensions for new builds and for refurbished tunnels. The order aligns with European standards but did not explicitly call out the comparative method. It would require an official to sign an exception to enforce the rule and enable train production.
Renfe hit a wall when no official was willing to sign that exception, given the fear of accidents in historic tunnels and the potential criminal liability that followed the Angrois incident. Progress stalled for sixteen additional months until Cantabria’s president, Miguel Ángel Revilla, publicly stated that the promised trains had not yet begun due to dimensional risks. The regional president of Cantabria was echoed by the Principality’s president, Adrián Barbón, who voiced similar concerns shortly after.
The affair drew considerable media attention, including international coverage, and prompted Transport officials to draft a rapid ministerial directive. The new instruction, published recently in the Official State Gazette, formalizes a method to allow lines where the established gauge cannot accommodate new trains to emulate existing sizes and passenger services. The directive is slated to take effect on July 1 and is expected to unlock some activity that had ground to a halt. The ministerial order spans more than 330 pages and revises the regulatory text on railway gauges, enabling a design that mirrors current operations where needed. The next step is a planned briefing in Madrid by key ministers to outline Feve’s future and the broader fate of metric gauges in Asturias and Cantabria.
Looking ahead, the ministry expects a ready design for the new units by the summer, with production starting soon after and deliveries to begin no later than 2026, a two-year delay from initial expectations. Regional leaders Barbón and Revilla plan a joint document to press for faster progress and plausible interim deliveries as trains become available. They are also seeking compensatory measures such as free commuter services through 2026, increased investment, revised timetables, and a more robust plan to boost rail service across the region. The key question remains: will the promised trains arrive on time and on budget, and will the public see a renewed, reliable metric gauged rail network in Asturias and Cantabria? These questions form the backdrop to ongoing discussions and policy decisions in Madrid and the two autonomous communities.
Note: The information above reflects reporting and official records as summarized by multiple sources in the Spanish rail sector and regional authorities.