175 years of the Barcelona-Mataró train line

28/10/2023 - 13:47 h

The train which inaugurated rail transport in the Iberian Peninsula set off from Barcelona on 28 October, 1848. The journey of 28.25 kilometres to Mataró represented an authentic revolution during this period and would not have been possible without its great promotor, the Mataró industrialist Miquel Biada.

The first train on the railway line from Barcelona to Mataró set off on 28 October 1848, from a station located right next to the Estació de França, in Av. Doctor Aiguader. Thousands of people turned out that day to see the train set off amid shouts hailing the new form of transport. This was an inaugural journey, carrying all the local and state officials, yet the main backer for the project, Miquel Biada, was not on board. This Mataró industrialist promoted the creation of the railway line upon his return from Cuba, where he had been amazed by the train line between Havanna and Güines. Unfortunately, he passed away a few months before his great dream became a reality.

Biada noted all the details of the trains on the line in Cuba, which were made in Great Britain. He moved to London with the aim of finding funding and engineers to make the Barcelona-Mataró line possible. While in the British capital, Josep Maria Roca i Cabanes acted as a mediator for him to attract foreign investment. Roca was swift to join the project.

Once they returned to Barcelona, they prepared the rail project to ask the Spanish state for the concession. They applied for it in June 1843 and embarked on a long and costly path to turn the arrival of the train into a reality. They overcame scepticism about the means of transport, protests over the forced expropriation of land which the line would run through and a whole series of boycotts during the work. Once the red tape was resolved, work on the line began in the summer of 1847 while the first four locomotives were being produced in England with the names Mataró, Barcelona, Catalunya and Besòs, along with 30 goods wagons and 62 passenger carriages.

When the line was built and all the mobile units had arrived from Great Britain, the engineers checked the entire route, the bridges, tunnels, locomotives and carriages. After their reports gave the all-clear, the date for the grand inauguration was set as 28 October 1848.