Delays of up to 25 minutes reported
Passengers on the high-speed rail line between Barcelona and Madrid faced delays of up to 25 minutes after thieves stole 110 metres of copper cable from the infrastructure near Tarragona. The incident occurred early Wednesday morning around 05:15 CEST between Alcover, in the Alt Camp region, and L’Espluga de Francolí in Conca de Barberà. Adif, Spain’s railway infrastructure manager, confirmed the theft and stated that technical teams were working to restore full service as quickly as possible. The disruption affected both directions of travel, with average delays lasting more than four hours.
The incident has been resolved and services have returned to normal.
By approximately 12:00 CEST, Adif announced that operations had been fully restored on both tracks. In addition to the stolen power cables, vandals also damaged fibre optic cabling along other sections of the route, complicating repair efforts.
Broader context: recurring infrastructure crime
This marks another instance of cable theft affecting critical rail infrastructure in Catalonia. Earlier on the same day, services between Girona and Barcelona were interrupted for ten hours due to a separate electrical fault at La Sagrera, unrelated to criminal activity. That issue was later resolved. Commuters are advised to check real-time service updates via Adif’s official network status portal, where current disruptions and planned works are published.
Reported by lavanguardia.com, El Nacional, beteve.cat, reusdigital.cat, diaridetarragona.com, novaconca.cat, Segre, larazon.es, madridactual.es, adif.es, elpuntavui.cat, 20minutos.es, elnacional.cat, Nació Digital.
