Government says it is ready to discuss Granada coastal train

The central government's representative in Granada province, José Antonio Montilla, has opened the door to the possibility of a coastal train from Nerja to Motril. Following conversations about a train running along the Costa del Sol from Estepona to Nerja, authorities and businesses in the neighbouring province of Granada have also been putting pressure on the government to extend the future service to reach Motril on the Costa Tropical.

The revision of the Plan de Ordenación del Territorio de Andalucía (POTA), a strategic document in which the Andalusian regional government includes the necessary infrastructures for the future development of the region, includes a train that goes from Cádiz to Nerja.

Granada has been fighting for decades for the need to connect its coastline, one of the few Spanish coastal areas with no railway network at all. Now it wants to take advantage of the train planned in the POTA to extend it to Motril.

The Andalusian regional government has shown its willingness to look at the extension of the coastal train to Motril in the revision of the POTA, after Costa Tropical business leaders demanded that it be included. However, the regional government has said that due to the complexity of the coast, the project would be considerably more expensive. Furthermore it says that the project falls under the competence of Spain's central government, who would have to study and finance the project. The section to Nerja already has an initial estimate of 6.7 billion euros.

Montilla responded to the Junta de Andalucía's points by saying: "I don't think it is very serious to put forward a proposal on the condition that the government pays for it. It is not the way to deal with an issue like this."

Mayor of Albuñol, María José Sánchez, explained that the socialist PSOE party, which is the party in government in Spain, considers that a train that runs along the coast "would be a good idea and a project that would benefit the whole region" and "would be an engine of economic and social development for the region".

But she also considered that "in politics you have to be rigorous and serious and when you make a proposal of this kind you have to have a path to follow in order to achieve this objective". She added that the socialist representatives are in charge of all the projects that they consider can lead to an increase in the wellbeing of all the residents.

Mayor of Almuñécar, Juan José Ruiz Joya, said that the train is something that people have been calling for "for a long time" and added, "It is a shame that the coastal train stayed in the province of Malaga, more specifically in Nerja and could not access Almuñécar, as well as Motril, which is a port of national interest."

Ruiz Joya said that Almuñécar town hall will support any initiative aimed at achieving the extension of the train and that it will use "all the resources that the law gives us and all the possible administrative mechanisms to exert the necessary pressure".

The president of the association of beach businesses on the Costa Tropical, Francisco Trujillo, stressed that it has been demonstrated that greater ease of travel translates into "more activity, more dynamism and more business", which is why he considers that the project would provide an important leap forward in the economic and social development of the area.

One of the major beneficiaries would be the port of Motril. Its president, José García Fuentes pointed out that the initiative would "greatly improve" transport and the connection with the Costa del Sol and with the entire coastal corridor.