The Miraflores station, in the Zaragoza district of San José, has become a symbol of the railway abandonment of the Aragonese capital. Located next to key infrastructures such as the Príncipe Felipe pavilion, the CDM La Granja or the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, and in an expanding urban environment, the station presents an image of deterioration that contrasts with its strategic potential in the east-west axis of Zaragoza.
For those who don’t use it regularly, the first impression is striking to say the least. “The current situation at the Miraflores station is one of real apathy and neglect,” describes Ignacio Serrano, spokesperson for the San José neighborhood association.
As he shares, the list of shortcomings is long, since there is a lack of staff, information boards, functioning ticket machines, operational access turnstiles, sufficient lighting and access from Tenor Fleta Avenue.
The station also does not have its own parking lot. The only space available is a dirt pitch which turns into a muddy mess every time it rains and which is used, for lack of alternatives, by users of the neighboring sports facilities. “Thinking about a cycle path allowing secure access or parking for bicycles is a utopia,” adds Serrano.
Added to this are leaks which, according to the complaint, “have not yet been repaired since its construction” and lead to a general feeling of abandonment. “For someone arriving for the first time, the impression is one of absolute abandonment, it is a lonely and ghostly station,” he says.
Lack of information, accessibility and security
In everyday life, the most serious problems are not only aesthetic. “What affects us the most is the lack of information, services and staff to contact or a counter to buy tickets,” explains Serrano. This situation effectively forces users to depend on machines that are frequently out of service or that do not warn properly.
Accessibility is another major deficit because the escalators have not been working for years and the elevators are very often out of service, which prevents access for people with reduced mobility.
“They are mainly affected by the lack of air-conditioned parking lots, dilapidated lighting or elevators which often do not work,” explains the district representative, who insists that these problems generate a perception of insecurity and expel potential users to other, better-maintained stations.
A structural problem: no mobility project
The neighborhood association emphasizes that the deterioration is neither specific nor recent. “The defects and lack of attention have been there since it opened,” says Serrano, who acknowledges that Tenor Fleta’s expansion could have been an opportunity to correct some problems, but they weren’t. According to him, the problem is deeper: “Abandonment arises from the lack of uses that are made of it. »
In this sense, the neighborhood group emphasizes the absence of a transport strategy connecting the east and west of the city.
“The municipal corporation does not have a transport project that structures the east-west axis as it does with the north-south axis,” denounces Serrano.
However, the establishment of a second tram line, demanded for years by neighborhood associations and neighborhood federations, appears to be the structuring solution which could integrate the station into the urban mobility network and give it meaning.
Users who feel like second-class citizens
The neighborhood’s complaints have been repeated for years and are also reflected in Google reviews, which give the resort an average rating of just 1.6 out of 5 possible points. “Neighbors don’t understand the lack of care and services provided at the station,” says Serrano.
As Alberto Gimeno wrote four months ago in one of these reviews, the station “is very helpless” and “only four cats come and the graffiti artists who perfume the station for us week after week.”
“Will the escalators ever work? When will some signs inform about the conditions? Are they going to pay for the Windows licenses of the signs or are they not able to optimize and move to free software like Linux and save our money? Look, I’ve been doing these things for years and, until today, they haven’t lifted a finger”, denounces Gimeno in this same comment.
The lack of staff, the unpredictability of the service and episodes such as the unexpected closure of the station with regular trains generate frustration and distrust. As Ignacio Serrano points out, “this is not common, but it happens some mornings”, which is why “the lack of foresight pushes many residents to prefer to use other stations or other means of transport”.
For the association, degradation and non-use feed each other: “We do not know what is the cause and what is the consequence, but lack of use and degradation go hand in hand. »
Even though there are comments from only a few months ago, there are others from three years ago. This is the case of Fernando, who criticized the absence of toilets, staff or information on the route by which the train arrives. “It’s absurd to have such a big station for nothing. From the outside it’s horrible and it’s even scary to enter at night,” he said.
“To call this waste a station offends even the word. I have seen abandoned buildings in better conditions. Absolute lack of assistance, security and appropriate signage. It’s simply a shame,” adds Diego Fernández, who shared this opinion six months ago.
Administrations and political groups are proposing new projects in the area despite its degradation
While the Miraflores station remains underutilized and degraded, different administrations and political groups are proposing projects that, if they come to fruition, will have a direct impact on its role in the mobility and urban development of Zaragoza.
On the one hand, a proposed resolution was put on the table to launch a shuttle service between Huesca and Zaragoza with the aim of increasing frequencies and making train schedules more flexible. As noted, this section acts as a bottleneck that limits both schedule variation and growth of rail service between the two cities.
However, the Ministry of Transport excludes the rail connection, considering that the feasibility report is negative, in addition to the fact that demand is “very low”, operating costs are high and the existing infrastructure does not allow a competitive service.
At the same time, as the station continues without a clear plan for rehabilitation or use, the immediate surroundings of Miraflores are progressing in urban development. In October, Zaragoza City Council gave the green light to the request of the SUZ(D) 38/3 sector compensation commission to increase the buildability of the land located next to the Tenor Fleta railway station and the third ring road.
The decision will allow the construction of up to 809 housing units, 277 more than those planned in the initially approved partial plan. The increase is justified, according to the documentation presented, by the sharp increase in urbanization costs, from just over 8.4 million euros to over 21.5 million, mainly due to embankment works, geotechnical requirements and the burial of a high-voltage line.
So while Miraflores remains a ghost station, its surroundings become the scene of rail projects and large urban developments that move forward in an uncoordinated manner. For the neighborhood movement, this lack of global vision reinforces the feeling that the station continues outside the city project, despite its potential as a key node in the east-west axis of Zaragoza.
Shared responsibilities and urgent solutions
Although railway management involves several administrations, the neighborhood movement considers that “the main one corresponds to the Zaragoza City Hall” because it is the administration closest to the inhabitants and responsible for planning mobility in a metropolitan area of 800,000 inhabitants.
“It is paradigmatic that, even if we are sold that Zaragoza is the fourth city in Spain, there is no public transport project that corresponds to it,” denounces Serrano.
In the short term, the demands are based on the inclusion of staff and information panels, the dignity of the facilities, the improvement of access to urban transport and real parking, and the guarantee that all regional and medium-distance trains stop in Miraflores, “as in the rest of the city’s intermediate stations.”
“We need institutional solutions now”
“The demand for the development of the Miraflores station is linked to the establishment of the second tram line,” insists Serrano, who considers this infrastructure “the fundamental piece and the first step to adapt the space and make it useful.”
In this context, the message addressed to the administrations is direct, because “a district like San José, with more than 70,000 inhabitants, deserves to have a useful station in decent condition”.
For residents, the current state of Miraflores is not just a transportation problem, but a reflection of a city that leaves strategic spaces outside its urban project. In short, it is a ghost station in Zaragoza which continues to grow without integrating one of its main railway gates.
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