AVE News

Spain has a great motorway network and plenty of flights from anywhere to anywhere else.
It also has the AVE - the high-speed train that, between gigantic costs, enormous bribes and commissions, plus sponsored rides (every passenger benefits from a modest subsidy) - crosses the country from one end to the other. More or less.
Here in the Levante Almeriense, there's not much AVE beyond a twinkle in a financier's eye, an empty politician's pocket, a few kilometres of expensive rail-bed and some bricked up tunnels to show for the project to bring Maria and her chickens to the market.
The problems for the high speed train are expropriations (often paid years later), the construction costs, maintenance costs, and the lack of customers. A high-speed train is in a hurry, but the fruit and veg companies say they will keep to the motorways and their lorries. And after the novelty wears off, who wants to go to Murcia anyway (the Almería continuation, to Granada, won't even begin work until 2030).
Anyhow... The Government says that the single-line Almería to Murcia link will be completed in 2023 at an extra cost of 1,800 million euros.
Part of the project, of course, is a station outside Vera, allowing us one day to whizz up to Madrid in style and comfort.