Italian high-speed train company will enter Spanish market

This is a brand new step in the internationalization strategy of the Italian state railway company plans to expand

At the end of last week, technical tests began on the railway link between Madrid and Barcelona using the Italian Frecciarossa 1000 high-speed trains. These tests are the final step before granting the green light to the Italian state railway company FS Group to operate its vehicles on the Spanish infrastructure and thus provide the local market with a new competitive service.

The FS subsidiary in Spain will be called Iryo and its services are expected to launch somewhere between November and December of this year. What’s more, the Frecciarossa trains will not only run between Spain’s two largest cities but also to Sevilla, Malaga, Valencia, Zaragoza and Alicante.

Superb sustainability is also on the map

This is not the first expansion of the FS Group outside of the Italian borders. In December 2021, the company initiated its first transborder link connecting the cities of Milan and Paris, becoming the first foreign railway company to operate in the French high-speed market. The move came after EU legislation removed barriers to a single European rail area, harmonising regulations among national passenger-rail systems.

As for Spain, the Iryo brand promises a service of a 3-hour trip between Barcelona and Madrid, with the first tickets to go on sale in the autumn.

The main features of the train, in addition to its high performance, are also its sustainable qualities: the Frecciarossa 1000 is in fact almost entirely recyclable and allows a saving of 80% of carbon dioxide per passenger each way, as certified by the Environmental Impact Certification (EPD).

The same sustainability is at the basis of the mission of the FS Group which also in Spain wants to promote increasingly collective mobility, as also indicated by the sustainable objectives of the Green Deal of the European Union.