One station, two terminals: development of Madrid’s Puerta de Atocha-Almudena Grandes and Chamartín-Clara Campoamor

Selected proposal for the transformation of Chamartín station and its surroundings.

The Spanish high-speed rail network, whose first section was commissioned in 1992 between Madrid and Seville, now totals more than 4,000km and comprises four radial corridors originating in Madrid.

The North Corridor originates at Chamartín station, while the corridors to the South, East and Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula depart from Atocha station.

The recent commissioning of the new standard-gauge tunnel between the two stations, together with the new infrastructure on the Atocha-Torrejón de Velasco section and, in the future, the new UIC-gauge underground station at Atocha, means that all the high-speed corridors will now be connected to one another, creating a single, interconnected network linking the country’s main cities.

In addition, the actions planned for Atocha and Chamartín will give these two major terminals sufficient capacity to handle the traffic generated by the extension of the high-speed network and the entry of new railway operators, resulting from the liberalisation of passenger transport being carried out by Adif and Adif Alta Velocidad.

The whole operation is divided into three large-scale projects: