Puntos de Interés
Infrastructure
Old Station of Villarmero
The old halt station of Villarmero was part of the Santander-Mediterranean Railway line, devised in the early 20th century with the aim of linking the sea ports of Santander and Valencia. This aim of the project was to provide rapid dispatch for all goods from the inland provinces. It would allow the journey to Valencia to be completed in hours, unlike the week-long navigation that at that time had to be carried out by sea, all the way around the coast.
What at first seemed like a great idea turned into a project riddled with obstacles and problems, particularly of a bureaucratic nature. Several plans were drawn up; different routes, the type of track and the course of the railway were changed.
Construction on the line began in Calatayud in 1925, and the first sections were inaugurated relatively promptly, with six opened between August 1927 and November 1930. The railway was initially planned to be 415 kilometres long, but in the end, only the 365 kilometres that ended at the Dosante station in Burgos were built.
This was mainly due to the fact that it was not possible to overcome the challenge of excavating a long tunnel that would allow the railway to pass under the Cantabrian divide. This was the tunnel of La Engaña. Seven kilometres of tunnel were planned; the longest underground railway project ever devised in Spain. On top of this challenge, there was another almost equally important task: to lower the track from the exit of the tunnel from 750 metres above sea level at Yera to 0 metres above sea level at the port of Santander.
During the Second Republic, the State undertook the continuation of the works. Once the line was integrated into Renfe in 1941, the State continued for another 17 years with the construction of the hardest section, the tunnel, which was completed with the help of hundreds of workers, some of whom were Republican prisoners of war.
Finally, and despite the completion of the highly complex underground work, in 1959 the works were halted, with the section down to Santander still to be completed. The famous World Bank report finally sentenced this unfinished work to oblivion, together with other similar projects in the rest of Spain.
The rest of the railway continued to operate under Renfe, and shortly afterwards, in January 1985, the railway line was closed in its entirety, the longest line in Spain to be closed abruptly.
In the case of the Villarmero halt station, a simple construction can still be seen, and a general view of the track with a 150-metre platform and small building offering shelter for passengers.
When construction began, it was based on a similar building in Lences de Bureba (Burgos), but ultimately, this small halt underwent numerous transformations after its abandonment, with only the structure of the ground floor remaining today.
In its prime, this building consisted of a waiting room, lodgings and a couple of attached huts. It was inhabited by 3 families who were responsible for work at the station and who also cultivated some fields at the back of the building.