‘The Spanish government’s commitment to the AVE [high-speed railway] Madrid-Lisbon is 2030. I insist, it’s the Spanish government’s commitment and it’s the horizon we’re working towards,’ said the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, at the final press conference of the Iberian summit held in Faro.
Sánchez added that with regard to the Lisbon-Porto-Vigo high-speed link, ‘the Spanish government’s commitment’, which he shares with the Portuguese government, ‘is 2032’.
The Prime Minister of Portugal, Luís Montenegro, at the same press conference, said that the national executive’s priority ‘is the Lisbon-Porto-Vigo-Madrid link’.
‘It’s the priority on the Portuguese side. We’ve already awarded the first section of this link and we even want to bring forward the timetable as far as possible,’ said Montenegro.
The Prime Minister added that ‘the second priority is the Lisbon-Madrid link via Évora-Badajoz’ and, in this case, ‘there is a first section that is already on the ground’.
‘We now need to reconcile the third crossing over the River Tagus in Lisbon with the construction of the high-speed link in Évora. It’s a process that runs simultaneously with the construction of the new Lisbon airport,’ Montenegro said.
‘The two governments are working together to try to combine the construction schedules for one and the other link so that they can be realised in the shortest possible time,’ added the Portuguese Prime Minister.
With regard to other railway links between Portugal and Spain, and in line with the final declaration of today’s Faro summit, they said that connections between Aveiro and Salamanca and between Faro-Huelva-Seville will be studied.