“We must pay constant attention to ensure that this issue is always on the agenda. So that by 2030 there will already be at least part of the connection [high-speed rail between Porto and Vigo]. And that, in the first years of 2030, this connection will be fully consummated”, stated António Cunha, president of the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N).

António Cunha pointed out that the railway connection between the North of Portugal and Galicia has a “route from the 19th century”, while there is an “industry and an economic fabric that wants to compete with the logic of the 21st century”.

“We have to have 21st-century infrastructure”, he claimed.

The official was speaking to journalists in Vigo, on the sidelines of the signing of a protocol between the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation of the Euroregion Galicia-North of Portugal (AECT GNP) and the Interregional Trade Union Council Galicia – North of Portugal.

The Xunta de Galicia thanked the Portuguese government for “its willingness to build the TGV Lisbon – Porto – Vigo”, hoping that the choice will remain with the next government.

“I hope that the new Portuguese government confirms its desire to work in this direction. And we would like the Spanish government to do its job, to have a 21st-century train”, said Jesus Gamallo, general director of Foreign Affairs and the European Union of the Xunta de Galicia.

On November 7, Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) pointed to the start of work on the high-speed rail connection between Porto and Vigo in 2027/2028, revealing that studies are already underway in both countries.

“The forecast is that everything will be ready so that the works can start in 2027 – 2028”, stated Carlos Fernandes, vice-president of IP, on the sidelines of the Transport and Logistics Networks conferences on the Atlantic Facade, organised by the Spanish Association of Transport and by the Atlantic Axis of the Northwest Peninsular.

The official said that the work “will hardly be completed in 2030”, but noted that nothing requires it to be completed until 2040, the deadline stipulated by the European Union to complete the “expanded network of the cross-border Atlantic corridor”.

According to the vice-president of IP, “Portugal will launch the first tender for a new high-speed line between Lisbon and Porto at the beginning of 2024” and, in the “next phase”, it will “prepare the connection between Braga and the border and between Campanhã and Sá Carneiro airport”.

“We are preparing these projects. And Spain has its informative study being prepared,” he said.