stunning Canfranc Railway Station on the Spanish-French border, now a hotel

Royal opening of Canfranc Railway Station

1928

In 1853, the Spanish and French govern­ments agreed to boost their trade links via a new rail line. Spain already had two main border crossings with France, and the demand for a 3rd border crossing was growing later that century. Thus Canfranc Inter­nat­ional Railway Station was planned, high in the Spanish Pyr­enees Mountains.

Construction of the station started in 1923 and ended five years later. Even though Canfranc was a village of only 500 people, it was a perfect place for both countries. Formally opened in 1928 by King Alfonso XIII of Spain and President of the French Republic, Gaston Dou­mergue, the opulent station used to be one of Eur­ope’s largest rail hubs, designed in the Golden Age of train travel.

Alfonso Marco is historian & engineer for the Technological Dept of the Spanish Railway. In his book The Canfranc History of a Leg­endary Train (2018), Marco costed the expensive project. And Miguel Rubio, Madrid Museum of Railways’ historian, showed the in­vest­ment was justified by practical and stylistic reasons. The grow­ing popularity of the railways required something special. The eclectic Beaux-Arts style ch­osen for the ex­terior was inspired by French palatial arch­itecture, while the interior was designed more like Classical Roman arch­itecture.

The st­ruc­t­ure was huge: 365 windows, one for each day of the year; hund­reds of doors; and 200+ ms long plat­forms. Clearly the Spanish government had hoped to attract rich visitors from ac­ross the continent to the station’s hotel. Works to build this colossal hub, which became the second biggest station in Europe, allowed each country to have its own booths of beau­tiful carved wood.

Once this mag­nificent building was created, why did it fall into disrepair? The first important issue was the different rail gauges used in the 2 coun­tries, meeting on either side of the border. This became a logist­ical problem as pass­engers and goods had to be transferred from one train to another. Canfranc was mainly in Spain but part of the stat­ion was considered French terr­itory; in fact a school was established in the village for the chil­dren of French staff. Now it is a station solely on the Spanish side.

It was the second biggest train station in Europe! Yet there were many crises for Canfranc. Despite the fanfare around its construction and inauguration, the 1929 Depress­ion hit and soon the massive station was only carrying 50 passengers a day. And only 3 years after opening, the second crisis hit: a blaze broke out in the lobby and surroundings, causing expensive damages.

Spanish dictator Francisco Fran­co shut the surrounding tunnels during the Spanish Civil War, to stop arms smuggling. And even more importantly, during WW2, it was one of the paths that Franco used to supply raw materials and food to Nazi Germany. A Spanish newspaper said the station became a “Casab­l­anca in the Pyrenees”, a key crossing for goods, and the esp­ionage centre for Nazi and Spanish authorities.

  

Hitler and Franco at Canfranc

Photo credit: Hobo Laments

In 1942 the Nazis took control of the area, the only part of Spain where they succeeded. The Iberian mountains yielded minerals that Nazi Germany needed for its military build-up before and during WW2. Spain provided the conduit for tungsten/wolfram, a metal used to strengthen Nazi Panzer tank armour used to such devastating effect in expanding Germany’s Lebensraum. Through Canfranc Station the rare earth of Portuguese origin passed on its way to Germany’s flourishing Wehrmacht. In return for the grey lustrous metal, Nazi payments came in the form of gold bars, circumventing the economic embargo imposed by the Allies.  

The Gestapo pulled people off the trains and hid the Jew­ish gold the Germans plundered. Yet at the same time the station became an escape route for many Jews, Resistance members and Allied soldiers, a centre for anti-Fascist spies and the forging and distribution of travel docu­ments. But how did the pro-Nazis and the anti-Nazis find Canfranc so funct­ional during the same war? The critical role Canfranc played during WW2 is still deb­ated in the re­cords. Yet having remained non-functional for trains for years, it’s clear that Canfranc’s status as a historical monument, before and during WW2, remained.

Main entrance

Exterior of Canfranc Railway Station today

In front of the Spanish Pyr­enees Mountains

Post WW2, the stunning facade fell apart; interiors were ruined; and the village population faded away. Still, tourists began to wander around the dil­ap­idated station, attracted by the historical present­ation from the recent past. But the history of the Canfranc line was sometimes an unsuccessful one, given its poor results and chronic under­funding. The Pyr­enees station, once been an emblem of trade, opulence and glob­alisation…. until a freight train derailment hit a bridge and dem­olished it, closing its already ail­ing line in Mar 1970. The bridge could have been easily replaced, but France no longer cared about the line. They decided that the bridge was too expensive to rebuild.

One of the long, open and airy corridors inside the station

Now the new hotel's lobby

Below the earth, Spanish physic­ists opened the Canfranc Underground Astroparticle Laboratory in 1985. Note the entrance beneath the station and movable labs set up on the old railway tunnels.

Spanish trains are run­ning again, but on a very modest scale. Now plans have been made to reopen the line into France. The Aragon Government is working to con­vert the station’s wide spaces into a 5-star hotel with 104 rooms. Work to rehabil­it­ate the area, declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 2007, is already focusing on the external facade.

Now that French officials also wish to restore Canfranc, the station will regain its original splendour. Restoration works are cur­rently foc­used on: 1] reopening the inter­national line, which will have consequences for Spain and France, and 2] rehabil­it­ation of the st­ation for its en­ormous historical and monumental value. Import­antly the Eur­opean Comm­ission already app­roved subsidies to help Spain.

The new project involv­ing the Governments of Aragon, France and the European Comm­is­sion has brought the station back to its former glory. The palatial building reopened in Jan 2023 as the classy Canfranc Estacion, a 104-room hotel showing the luxury associated with the golden age of travel. In the lobby, once the lofty customs hall, with the coat of arms of France high on one wall and that of Spain on the wall above reception.

French-Spanish border

with Toulouse to the north and Canfranc to the south

Read Canfranc: bringing an abandoned railway station back to life, Adele Berti.