After France comes Spain. After the Milan-Paris comes the Madrid-Barcelona. Always in the sign of high-speed rail made in Italy. Trenitalia, the subsidiary of the FS group for passenger transport, exports its flagship product to Europe: the Frecciarossa 1000. Once the tests have been completed, the authorizations have been collected, it is time for Trenitalia to welcome the first travelers to Iberian land.
A maiden voyage between Madrid and Valencia is scheduled for Monday 21 November, reserved for representatives of institutions, the business world and the Spanish media. From 25 November the real commercial service will start with the first Frecciarossa trains in circulation on the Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona section. In a second phase, iryo, the commercial brand chosen by Trenitalia for the Spanish Frecciarossa, will unite all the main Iberian cities, including Valencia, Seville and Malaga. Ticket prices have been set from 18 euros one way.
Competition from Renfe and Sncf
In Spain, Trenitalia will compete with the landlords of Renfe, the state railway company and the French of SNCF, present for about a year on the Iberian high-speed market with Ouigo, SNCF’s low-cost TGV. Among other things, on 7 October Ouigo Spain inaugurated the new Madrid-Valencia connection, a move to which Renfe immediately reacted by applying a more aggressive drop in fares, with offers from 7 euros on some routes. To better face the Spanish challenge, Trenitalia has ordered the Italian factories of Hitachi Rail (Pistoia in particular) to manufacture 20 Frecciarossas: at the moment we start with a fleet of 9 trains, the others will follow.
The Ilsa consortium
Frecciarossa trains for Spain have the same characteristics as those that have been in circulation for some time in Italy. From a corporate point of view, the Spain operation saw the creation of an ad hoc subject: the Ilsa consortium, in which Trenitalia is a shareholder with a 45% stake while the 55% is in the hands of the Iberian shareholders, the regional airline Air Nostrum and the infrastructure operator Globalvia. Ilsa, which was awarded the high-speed services for 10 years, has invested around one billion euros in Spain, expects to generate 2,600 direct and indirect jobs and attract 50 million passengers.
Extra-Italian development
Spain represents another step towards the creation of that “multidomestic company” of which the managing director of the FS Group, Luigi Ferraris, often speaks. A strategy that sees Europe as an increasingly domestic market. The ten-year industrial plan of the FS Group envisages an increase in revenues for the Group from 1.8 billion euros in 2019 to approximately 5 billion in 2031 for the development of its business outside Italy. On the other side of the Mediterranean, Ferrovie dello Stato is active in Greece with Hellenic Train, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trenitalia since 2017. On 1 July, the new logo and new name of the Hellenic company (and also the trains) were presented in Athens.