Background Between the states of France and Spain lies a natural barrier in the form of the
Pyrenees mountain range, a geographic feature has been a historic challenge to cross-border traffic. During 1992, the governments of France and Spain began to discuss options for improving cross-border connectivity via the creation of a new international railway between the two countries to accommodate high volume of traffic that had been projected. During the following year, the scheme became one of 20 priority projects highlighted under the wider
Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) programme. Prior to the project's launch, extensive surveying efforts were conducted to support the line's future construction. While the forecasted passenger figures on their own did not justify construction of the line, the need for effective freight movements via a modern fast line was apparent; while annual freight traffic between Spain and the rest of Europe had reached 144 million tonnes by 1998, rail freight across all of the four conventional lines then available comprised just three per cent of that total. It received a public
subsidy of €540 million, split between the
European Union, France and Spain. The European Union also provided 25 percent of the cost of the original construction works. From the onset, the construction timeline was particularly stringent, although considerable planning had been completed beforehand; this hastiness was politically driven, partially due to the either nation being obligated to pay an
indemnity to the concessionaire for failures that resulted in the project overrunning its established opening date. Various other bridges, tunnels, and miscellaneous civil engineering works were also required, however their cost was dwarfed by that of the tunnel ($375 million) by a considerable margin.
Testing and opening During November 2008, test running commenced; the international section was officially opened on 17 February 2009. However, the running of services were delayed until December 2010 because the station at Figueres was not finished. Services in the section started on 19 December 2010 with a
TGV service from Paris via Perpignan to
Figueres–Vilafant and regular freight traffic started on 21 December 2010. Eventually the international section was officially inaugurated on 27 January 2011. However, the delay in the opening of the natural extension of the line between Figueres and Barcelona led to lower traffic than expected and therefore to lower revenues for the concessionaire, which was generated via a
toll system. During early 2014, the concessionaire experienced a catastrophic financial situation as the collected tolls were insufficient to repay the €500 million which had been borrowed from various banks. In July 2015, the company announced that it was
insolvent; on 15 September 2016, the court of Girona ordered the
liquidation of TP Ferro. As a consequence, France and Spain, through the
Railway infrastructure managers SNCF Réseau and Adif, took over operations of the line, as well as the debt. This takeover took place on 21 December 2016, by the joint subsidiary "Línia Figueres-Perpinyà" (or "Línea Figueras Perpignan S.A."), created on 21 October 2016. ==Line==