In a statement, the president of Eixo Atlântico, who is also the mayor of Viana do Castelo, said that the “petition”, sent to the Portuguese ministers of State and Foreign Affairs and the Spanish minister of Foreign Affairs and Transport, was “received positively”.

The new bridge over the River Minho that will serve the Linha do Minho will be built east of Valença and Tui, but the exact location is yet to be determined, says Eixo Atlântico, adding that, “similarly, the final administrative procedures and the final engineering and information studies of the sections on both sides, between Porriño and Frontera, on the Galician side, and between Ponte de Lima and Frontera, on the Portuguese side, are yet to be completed”.

Luís Nobre recalls that a decade ago “Eixo Atlântico proposed the construction of a new high-speed line between Ferrol (Galicia) and Lisbon, which would, in turn, have a station at Francisco Sá Carneiro airport”.

“This petition was first made in 2016 at a meeting between municipalities and businesspeople at the Europarque in Santa Maria da Feira. Subsequently, at the General Assembly of the Atlantic Axis held in Maia in 2018, the proposal that the new line should have a station at Francisco Sá Carneiro airport was transmitted to the Government of António Costa, through the Minister of the Environment, Matos Fernandes”, the note adds.

According to the Atlantic Axis, “this line would be an alternative to the Minho line which, after its modernisation and electrification, an initiative led by the Atlantic Axis, continued to have the handicap that travel times could only be improved to a limited extent due to the bottlenecks between Valença and Porto, most of which were beyond the reach of solutions. At the same time, several meetings were held with Spanish government officials until the southern exit from Vigo was unblocked”.

“This, which is history, is documented in the minutes of the Atlantic Axis and in the newspaper archives of the media, and it is important to know about it at a time when the construction process has been unblocked and is progressing as planned, both on the Portuguese and Spanish sides. A merit that is exclusive to municipalities (especially those in the Atlantic Axis), civil society and organisations that promote and defend the railway”, he says.