It was a historic claim to one of the neighborhoods in Bilbao with the largest number of foreign-born residents. Until now it was only possible to get there by car, city bus, commuter train or bicycle. The metro, the king of public transportation in the capital, Biscay, and the most used by its residents, was missing. Three decades after its launch, the Basque government and the Bizkaia District Council officially presented on Friday the project that will allow central Bilbao to be connected to the south.
The new branch is configured as an extension of the third line, which has been in service since 2017, although it will have its own entity and become the fourth line of the Bilbao Metro. Users will be able to reach the neighborhoods of Ricalde and Iralla, where about 50,000 residents live, and will also benefit from other areas that lack nearby stations. Among them is the University of Deusto Campus, where the nearest station is about a 20-minute walk away. It will also be easy to reach the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts and Doña Casilda Park, the green lung of the city.
The general management company, Eusko Trenbide Sarea, updates information study and construction projects to speed up procedures. The S-shaped path will be 6.7 kilometers long and will cross the Earth’s interior from north to south, as confirmed on Friday by promotional institutions. The planned investment amounts to 412 million euros, and the tunnel boring machines will enter the Ricalde neighborhood itself at the end of 2027, the election year in Euskadi.
Connection to Incartier
The project also thinks about connecting this line to the largest and least populated area of Bizkaya at the same time. However, its arrival will be dealt with in a second phase, although this first phase will leave the necessary infrastructure in place. The deadlines in this case are much longer and not entirely clear. The Basque government needs to transfer powers to be able to operate the passenger line arriving here, so the central executive will have the final say. The Basque Ministry’s plans include a request to entrust Adif to manage even the actions planned in these ways “so that the deadlines are not delayed any further.”
Both the Bizkaia Provincial Council and the Basque Government congratulated themselves today on this agreement at the presentation ceremony. Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales (PNV), highlighted the Basque Country’s commitment to “a modern, comfortable, fast and affordable public transport system, with the train, in its various forms, as an essential part of the present and the future”.
For her part, the Public Prosecutor of the Biscaya Region, Elixabete Etxanobi, highlighted “the strength of railways as an element of social and territorial cohesion, responding to the mobility requirements of the residents of Incartier and the neighborhoods in southern Bilbao.” Finally, the Minister of Sustainable Mobility, Susana García Chueca (PSE-EE), described this line as “one of the great mobility infrastructures that Bizkaya lacks,” because it is “a line that the neighborhood has been waiting for for a very long time.”
‘Difficult’ negotiations
This image of unity contrasts with the tensions witnessed in recent weeks between the two institutions. Sources who attended the meetings confirmed to El Pais newspaper the difficulties and “difficult negotiations” between the Biscay and Basque governments, both regarding technical and economic issues. Even publicly there were moments of tension. Most recently, at the general meetings of Bizkaya where the president of the regional council had already warned that they would not be willing to finance an option that “would not be linked to Incartieri”.
Neighborhood pressure was also crucial, especially after protests were organized around a platform a decade ago. This pro-Line 4 group gathered weekly in front of the provincial council and organized various protest events until the demand finally entered the institutional agenda.