Historic stations

Toledo Station

Edición Impresa


Portada de la edición impresa

Noviembre de 2005

En esta edición han participado Adif, a través de su Dirección de Patrimonio y Urbanismo y la  Dirección Ejecutiva de Estaciones de Viajeros.

Esatación de Toledo

In 1856, the government granted the Marquis of Salamanca the concession for the Castillejo-Toledo line, which marked the birth of the Compañía del Ferrocarril Castillejo a Toledo (Castillejo-Toledo Railway Company) and which became the property of the Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante (Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante Railway Company) in 1858. Work commenced in October 1857, being opened by Queen Isabella II in 1858.

The present Toledo station, which was commissioned in April 1919, replaced an earlier one, smaller and simpler, which was built in 1857 by the engineer Eusebio Page.

Alfonso XIII, in a visit to the city in 1912 commented to the local authorities and railway management that it was a pity that a city like Toledo did not have a station to rank with its architectural heritage. MZA started proceedings that very year to buy the new land and entrusted company architect Narciso Clavería y Palacios with the new station project in 1917.


Toledo vista general

In his design, Narciso Clavería managed to combine two extremes in the concept of a passenger building, which had since the 19th century involved a constant controversy between engineers and architects: functionality and aesthetics. A representative of the historicist tendency at the time, he conceived a beautiful Neomudejar architecture full of both chromatic and material details, without ceasing to be, in spite of this, functional and modern. The building consists of a central section flanked by two lower side wings, a clocktower having been built on one of these ends, an architectural element that had until then been reserved for Churches and Councils, a symbol of the boom and the importance that these buildings were acquiring in cities.


Anden lado Madrid
Entrada al anden

The civil engineer and assistant director of the company, Ramón Peironcely, was responsible for management and supervision of the work. Its construction was undertaken by the Frenchman M. Hourdillée, costing in excess of one million pesetas.

Stuccoed ceilings, plasterwork and panelling are the work of the Toledo potter Angel Pedraza, and the master smith Julio Pascual Martínez cut the metal fittings, lamps and wall lamps.

The entire work was completed with smaller buildings such as the fish-market quay, the public lavatory building and the electricity transformer, reached by the great range of activities in the main building and into which the polylobate, interlacing horseshoe arches extend, together with the brick friezes, staggered crenellations, carpentry framework, tiles and latticework that go to form it.

15 November, 2005 marked a great development with the opening of the high speed line between Madrid and Toledo. Madrid was thereby connected by the short time of around 30 minutes without any intermediate stops, compared with a very heavily congested road that generally has traffic jams at peak times. Access to the city of Toledo and links with Madrid were in this way improved, saving time and facilitating access to both tourism and to the inhabitants of Toledo, a great many of whom work in the Spanish capital, perceiving their city to be closer to the Madrid conurbation, which means, as well as major savings and improved quality of life for these inhabitants, improved economic growth for this imperial city.

As well as the President of the Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the opening of this line was also attended by José María Barreda, President of Castilla-La Mancha, Magdalena Álvarez, the Minister for Public Works, José Bono, the Minister of Defence, Esperanza Aguirre, President of the Madrid Region and José Manuel Molina, the Mayor of Toledo.


Linea de alta velocidad  Madrid - Toledo

Toledo thereby saw the birth of what is now the third High Speed line in Spain after the Madrid-Seville and Madrid-Zaragoza-Lleida lines.