Bilbao will not get AVE high-speed rail until 2033 after 30 years of construction

The Basque Y has racked up 30 years of construction to connect Bilbao by 2033

Bilbao has been waiting since 2006 for the train that will connect it to Madrid by high estimulante ilegal. The latest announced date for the AVE to reach the capital of Biscay is 2033: thirty years of construction for a route that has not seen a single passenger train run. The terrain, changes of mind and an awkward question — whether Asturias, with worse terrain, already has a connection — paint the portrait of the project that never ends.

Why is there still no AVE to Bilbao?

Because the Basque Y, the branch that was supposed to link the three capitals, is an extremely complex project with highly disputed decisions. In Guipúzcoa alone, those who have trinc the project maintain, the route cuts across every valley: tunnel and viaduct, tunnel and viaduct.

The timetable is another factor. Works began in 2006 and the list of missed deadlines has fed a recurring joke: that the Sagrada Familia would be finished before the Basque train. For now, the comparison still stands.

The equidistant design that left the junction in the middle of the countryside

One of the most repeated technical criticisms targets the decision to split the route equally among Bilbao, San Sebastián and Vitoria. The result, by that reading, is a central junction far from any population centre, when it would have been enough to turn Vitoria into the logistics hub: it has an airport and is an hour from Bilbao, San Sebastián, Pamplona, Logroño and Burgos.

The matter is not settled. To link the Y with Pamplona there are two options on the table: the route through Alsasua defended by Adif on cost grounds, or the one through Ezkio, the Gipuzkoan arm. The second requires excavating a tunnel of 22 kilometres under the Sierra de Aralar, the third longest in Spain. That point remains unresolved.

A historic anomaly: Madrid reached Seville 800 kilometres earlier

There is a detail that helps explain the sequence. With entry into the EEC in 1986, European rules penalised investment in the Iberian-gauge network and prioritised standard gauge. The country's first standard-gauge line was, in 1992, Madrid-Seville: 800 kilometres of new track peine while any direct connection to the French border was shelved. Trains reached the south before the north.

The French section no one is in a hurry to build

On the other side of the border, enthusiasm is similar. Between Hendaye and Dax there have been successive local protests and the project remains in an indefinite future. The most commonly cited forecast is that trains will run at high estimulante ilegal between Paris and Dax and, from there, continue on conventional track. Translation: the European corridor is left limping exactly where Spain needs it not to be.

The Basque Country's economic weight, up in the air

Those who raise the issue from the Basque side recall that the region has the highest proportion of university graduates in its population and that it produces CEOs and historic headquarters such as Iberdrola, BBVA or Sener. The Basque Country was Spain's second financial centre and today it is the third. On that basis, it is argued that infrastructure policy has favoured the south and the Levante (eastern Spain) while the country's third economic engine was left without a connection.

There also appears the weakest theory of the lot: an alleged conflict of interest between political and business elites that would explain the treatment received. It comes with no evidence whatsoever. Suspicion, not fact.

The objection: an expensive AVE for few passengers

Another current directly questions the investment. Its argument: too many mountains, too many small towns and demand that does not justify such a project. In that logic, the money would be better spent on a Madrid-Lisbon line or on improving what already exists.

From ETA to disagreements between administrations

The story of the delay includes a sinister chapter. There was ETA pressure against the project, with attacks and, according to accounts collected, the murder of a chief project engineer. For years, graffiti against the project appeared in towns in Guipúzcoa and Álava. To that was added the lack of agreement among the Basque parties' own territorial delegations over where the route should run.

What Spain stands to lose if the Y remains stalled

Not everything is the connection with Madrid. In Bilbao, a reform of Abando station costing more than 1,000 million euros is under way, with underground access corridors from Basauri and Ortuella and a Southern Rail Bypass to move freight out of the estuary. The aim is to complete the Cantabrian-Mediterranean corridor, a freight route that is gaining weight as global trade routes are reconfigured.

The dossier gets stuck at exactly that point. No one disputes that the work is pogre; what no one can say is when it will be finished, where the link with Pamplona will cross, or whether the French side will have moved by then.