This is probably not a book for those whose interest in Spain gravitates towards such contemporary phenomena as the films of Pedro Almodóvar, Barcelona Football Club or the fashion retailer Zara. Nor, as far as trains go, is it a volume for people fascinated by the engineering feats of Spain’s new high-speed AVE train system, which means that you can travel from Madrid to Seville in just over two hours, or from Madrid to Barcelona in less than three (rather amazing, when you recall that the old service used to take nine hours). Christopher Howse does not like high-speed trains. Even moderately paced express trains are too fast for him, for one cannot really observe the landscape from them.
The book, as Howse makes clear at the beginning, is ‘about Spain, not about trains’. Howse’s interest in trains is limited; he does travel on the narrow-gauge line from Bilbao to León, and he seems to have a special affection for lines which have ceased to exist, such as the route from Madrid to Burgos through the Somosierra pass, closed in 2008. But his interest in Spain, fortunately, is profound and marvellously eccentric.
The book is structured as a series of ten railway journeys which embrace all sorts of unexpected corners of what is still Western Europe’s wildest country. In keeping with Howse’s determinedly off-beat approach, there is almost nothing here about Barcelona or Madrid (a page on the former, while the latter does not even appear in the index), not to mention popular seaside resorts such as Benidorm or Marbella.
The first journey begins at what must be one of the oddest railway stations in the world, Canfranc, which has a façade 790 feet wide.
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