Zoom
Ignacio Lillo
Friday, 10 April 2026, 10:20
There is a trend- which I consider unhealthy - to reckon that in Malaga things are already going relatively well in economic terms, and therefore, there's no rush to invest in anything new. Coupled with this, people keep repeating the self-serving mantra that much has already been done here in the past, and now it's "someone else's turn". A spinoff of this, and a truly devilish one, is the idea that it's not all that urgent to sort out the high-speed rail line because, at the end of the day, we have the airport, and with the bus transfer and a four-hour journey, "it's not really that bad..."
The recent Holy Week is a clear example of all this. The government, especially our dear minister of transport and his Socialist circle, have been very pleased with themselves (in a way, they've breathed a sigh of relief) because the tourism figures on the Costa del Sol were significantly better than initially predicted, despite the high-speed rail cut. They see themselves as victors over the PP, the business lobby and the media who were branded doom mongers for forecasting a debacle.
In part, they are right, because indeed, the pull of Malaga's processions and the fine weather on the Costa del Sol aren't stopped by a lack of trains or by petrol prices being through the roof. It's true that visitors have mostly come by plane and car, and the data is undeniable.
That is one way of reading it, no doubt, but it's the reading of mediocre, complacent and unambitious leaders who are totally detached from the reality of this province and have no clue about its massive capacity for generating economic activity and resources.
Let me give you a comparison; it goes slightly off track, but I'm sure you'll take my point: the Malaga metro has once again broken its passenger record, despite a workers' strike that caused a fair bit of damage. To give you an idea, on Holy Monday, it lost 10,000 passengers compared to the previous year. Therefore, the takeaway shouldn't just be that the metro hit a new historic high, which it did. Rather, it's how many thousands more passengers it would have captured were it not for the partial walkouts during peak times.
In the same vein, one has to wonder what level of hotel and holiday apartment occupancy would have been reached; how many jobs would have been created; and what the level of sales in hospitality and retail would have been if the high-speed line had been ready on time.
At the end of the day, that represents many millions of euros in lost revenue that has gone elsewhere. Don't count on me to celebrate the victory of the losers.