High-speed trains return to Malaga today after four months and two track closures

On Wednesday afternoon, SUR was an exclusive witness to the passage of an AVE train without passengers along the closed line. This train travelled several times between Malaga city and Antequera, testing the newly repaired track.

The train made several runs from 6pm until nightfall, that is, just a few hours before the final reopening to passengers. The purpose of these exercises was to check the safety of the infrastructure for passengers and railway staff.

In the last three months, Adif has had to clear the hillside, moving 200,000 cubic metres of earth, as well as the complex stabilisation of a high-voltage pylon and the removal almost to its base of a 300-metre-long, 15-metre-high retaining wall. Subsequently, the superstructure of the line has been replaced: rail, overhead wires and signalling.

During this long impasse, Renfe has been the only operator to continue providing the service, with a handful of daily departures, using bus transfers to Antequera-Santa Ana railway station. Meanwhile, the private operators stopped doing so and, in fact, Iryo placed its employees on temporary redundancy leave (ERTE) due to unforeseen circumstances and force majeure.

On Thursday, the railway line starts to get back to normal with direct trains run by the three operators (Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo). For the time being and for several months, the services available will not be as frequent as they were at the beginning of the year.

The first train on Thursday was due to depart at 9.50am from Atocha, Madrid, arriving at María Zambrano at 12.52pm. In the opposite direction, the first service, run by Renfe, will depart from the capital of the Costa del Sol at 12pm and will arrive at its destination at 2.58pm.

The timetable has been clearly reduced, due to the fact that, for the moment, there is just a single track on the 54.5 kilometres between Los Prados, in Malaga, and Antequera-Santa Ana. This is due to the fact that the landslide destroyed equipment that allows trains to pass from one track to the other along this stretch, and which will not be replaced until the end of this year.

Although at first the reduction in available trains was expected to be as much as 40 per cent, judging by the services the public company had on sale last week, it is ultimately offering a total of 13 daily departures from Madrid to Malaga, and a further 12 in the opposite direction.

If we take as a reference the first working day after the long weekend, which will be Monday, 4 May, Iryo and Ouigo will provide another three daily trains each. Together with those of Renfe, this makes a total of 18-19 daily services. If before the cut-off there were 26 trains running in each direction, now there will be almost 30 per cent fewer than there were at the end of 2025.

The second substantial change on Thursday is that passengers will face longer journeys than before the closure. The data provided by the operators show that journeys will take a minimum of three hours, whereas until the beginning of this year the journey was usually covered in two and a half to three and a quarter hours.

However, the journey will be extended by up to 24 minutes on those services, such as the one in the early morning, when the train stops at all intermediate stations in smaller towns. This is due to the need to reduce speed to a minimum when passing by the Alora embankment works. Trains also slow down in the area of the Adamuz accident, among other stretches where there are speed restrictions. Long gone are the early years of the AVE, when the direct route, without stops, took barely two and a quarter hours.