The dress had to be yellow. That was the instruction for the sisters in order to be recognised at the officers' ball held at the station hotel by the Allied spies, two Spanish and two French, who would later be waiting for them in Saragossa. The aim was to collect the military secrets that they’d carry clandestinely. Letters, photos, messages in French or English, documents between the French Resistance and Great Britain or the United States that were vital to defeating Hitler. It was two days before the trip between Canfranc and the Aragonese capital. It would be the first of many that the sisters would make between 1940 and 1944 as collaborators with the Allies in the Second World War...
Although it could well be, it’s not an extract from a Le Carré novel. This is Canfranc; and those girls were the Pardo sisters. The exploits of the daughters of the railway tunnel watchman (recounted by the newspaper Heraldo de Aragón) is one of the most thrilling and novelistic that the international railway station has given us. But it’s only a small sample of the anonymous, hopeful, trembling lives that passed through those carriages.
Canfranc station holds in its nineteenth-century profile the bustle of destinies and mysteries of an entire generation. It was the great gateway between Spain and Europe at one of the most turbulent times for the continent. The vicissitudes of history and a fateful railway accident in 1970 interrupted train traffic at Canfranc.
However, ACCIONA's refurbishment of the emblematic building and the creation of a new station with a new track bed is now a reality that will return the whisper of railway sleepers to a genuinely railway landscape. An opportunity for the area to regenerate the original dream of modernity and progress that inspired Canfranc International Station almost a century ago. Join us on this journey through the past and the promise of a new horizon for Canfranc.
Canfranc station (Spain), located on the edge of the Aragonese Pyrenees, was inaugurated in 1928 by Alfonso XIII. The fact that it was then the second largest in Europe is a clue to the prestige and influence with which it was conceived. The railway line was planned as the great gateway between Europe and Spain, which promised, as it did for some periods, the transit of goods, the emancipation of artists, the flow of new aesthetic and intellectual tastes and faster communications.
The building, with its glazed façade and a noucentista taste reminiscent of French palatial architecture of the time, was 241 metres long, 12 metres wide, with 75 doors on each side and 365 windows (one for each day of the year). A sophisticated showcase of Spain for the foreign travellers who alighted there.
Its international nature meant that two sets of tracks had to be installed, as the Spanish sleepers were of a different gauge and travellers had to change trains if they wanted to continue their journey to the border country. Thus, the station had double everything, platforms, ticket offices, police stations, customs... and a beautiful vestibule inside the station for transfers.
Since the traffic of the international line was cut in 1970, all these facts, the descriptions of this iconic place, the function for which it was built, have been told in past tense with a varnish of melancholy. But now, after years of complaints, the rehabilitation carried out by ACCIONA has awakened Canfranc from its lethargy and the station’s story is once again written in a continuous present full of opportunities.
ACCIONA's task in this new Canfranc has been a meticulous, goldsmith's exercise to regenerate its elegance while respecting the appearance of the past, to pay homage to its historical legacy and to create a new station that will revitalise the area as it did back in the day.
The refurbishment plan for the old Canfranc station, undertaken by a joint venture formed by ACCIONA and Avintia, had three very clear objectives:
- The recovery of the historic building of the new station, respecting its volumes and the ornamental elements that characterise its original appearance. This building will soon house a five-star hotel with more than 100 rooms in which the iconic transit lobby is for public use despite housing the complex's reception desk.
- The creation of a new international station with a new track bed and new platforms. A total surface area of almost 1,000 m2 with services for passengers.
- The recovery of the environment by creating a new urban area where the old railway beach used to be. Around 13 hectares of housing, shops and catering services. All with the same railway aesthetics so that those who enter the place are enveloped by the essence of the old Canfranc station.
The Gothic era revolutionised building throughout the 12th and 13th centuries with its cathedrals, devising unthinkable architectural elements capable of distributing the forces of the vaults outwards, of elevating the spaces and opening the walls to the magical light of large coloured windows. For many, the new cathedrals of the 19th century were the railway stations.
Canfranc station is an example of the technical acumen of the time. During the refurbishment project carried out by ACCIONA, always with the precept of safeguarding the original appearance of volumes and ornaments in mind, the engineers and workers were surprised to find a building with an exemplary definition of spaces despite the means available 100 years ago.
A work that required the diversion and new channelling of Aragon river, the levelling of 20 hectares, retaining walls, defences on the slopes, the opening of the Somport tunnel (a perforated length of 7,874.81 m) and the construction of 12 metre-deep filled with the extracted material, almost the same height of the main building.
INFOGRAPHIC. New Canfranc International Rail Station
Canfranc International Station was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in the Monument category in 2002. Precisely because of the superb architectural execution with which it was built in the past and the imperative in its refurbishment to preserve every last detail of its original appearance, sustainability and the circular economy have been present throughout ACCIONA's regeneration project.
"In Canfranc nothing is left over and nothing new is needed", has been the mantra of the work on site: keeping the trusses without partitioning, saving the old railway elements for their later integration, reusing the materials that at first glance looked like rubble…
For example, a crusher was brought to the site during the work in order to break down soil and waste materials from some areas and then reuse them as raw materials in other areas. In addition, the demolition debris from the soil has contributed to the environmental regeneration of a quarry near the station.
The arrival of the railway to Canfranc meant the development of the economy and progress for the town and for the whole territory. The regeneration of the International Station, the new coming and going of trains and passengers, will be a new impulse for the area.
This project does not only entail taking care of the artistic and historical heritage, the memory of the place, but also a reactivation of the economy, job opportunities, tourism and an invaluable help to stop the depopulation of one of the most affected areas of the so-called empty Spain.
Fuentes: ACCIONA, El Heraldo, Jot Down, Barceló