BNG criticizes AVE silence in Seixalbo

BNG senator Carme da Silva used Spain’s Senate on April 28 to accuse the Transport Ministry of staying silent about the future of the Ourense high-speed rail bypass through Seixalbo. (laregion.es) (senado.es) Da Silva said the ministry has not clarified deadlines, has not explained the state of the works, and has not said whether there is a firm decision on the line’s final layout. She asked for updated reports and an immediate answer on whether the stretch between Seixalbo and Ourense station is being abandoned. (laregion.es) The disputed project is the Variante Exterior de Ourense, an 8-kilometer high-speed approach between Taboadela and Seixalbo that Adif says will replace the current access into the city. Adif has said the line is being built as double-track, electrified standard gauge to raise capacity, improve regularity and cut travel times. (adifaltavelocidad.es) Da Silva argued that dropping part of the original plan would leave a key bottleneck in place. She said the full build-out would let trains avoid the Taboadela interchange and the current speed restrictions on the approach to Ourense. (laregion.es) The timing matters because the public schedule already runs years out. In March 2025, La Región reported that Adif had opened a €321,000 contract to design track installation for Taboadela-Seixalbo, with 15 months for drafting and no track laying expected before 2027. (laregion.es) That same report said construction time and safety testing would push the start of operations to 2029 under the then-current timetable. For residents and local officials, any uncertainty over the final connection into Ourense raises the prospect of more delay on a project already moving in stages. (laregion.es) Adif has continued to present the bypass as active work, not a shelved scheme. In January 2024 it said it had completed the deck of a 356-meter viaduct over the OU-525 road and the Barbaña River, part of the Rante tunnel-Seixalbo section. (adifaltavelocidad.es) The rail manager also put out a separate tender in August 2024 for acoustic protections and vibration studies on the urban integration and conditioning of the Ourense rail network on the Taboadela-Seixalbo connection. The notice set an estimated value of €524,434.68 and a 24-month contract term. (boe.es) What Da Silva is pressing for now is a yes-or-no answer on whether those contracts still lead to the original route into the city. Until the ministry answers, the politics around Seixalbo are centered less on whether work exists than on whether the full promised connection still does. (laregion.es)