Rail travel

Going like the wind

Linking the TGV from Perpignan to Barcelona

The Mistral and the less well known Tramontane are no longer just Continental winds. They are the names of two tunneling machines on opposite sides of the Franco-Spanish border, each weighing 2,300 metric tones, and 150 metres long. These giants will be carving a route through the solid rock of the Pyrénées, twin tunnels that from 2009 will carry the TGV track on the train’s latest great engineering feat to link Perpignan with Barcelona. The cost of the line is put at 950 million Euros.

On the French side the tunnel starts near Le Perthus, a village about 30 kilometres from Perpignan that often seems more Spanish than French. It has a large Spanish quarter whose shops open eleven hours a day, even on Sundays, a hangover from the time when spirits and cigarettes were noticeably cheaper on the southern side of the border. Citizens of Le Perthus are afraid that the new rail link will eventually dent the village’s prosperity, after 300 years as the official frontier between France and Spain, first agreed in the time of Louis XIV by the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrénées.