Buying Renfe tickets at Principe Pio station in Madrid (AFP / GABRIEL BOUYS)
The Spanish government approved on Tuesday the appointment of Alvaro Fernández Heredia, until then Secretary General in charge of Sustainable Mobility under the Minister of Transport Oscar Puente, to the post of president of the public railway company Renfe.
Mr. Fernández Heredia succeeds Raúl Blanco, who resigned for “personal reasons” at the start of the year.
Engineer and doctor in transport infrastructure, Alvaro Fernández Heredia was successively a university teacher, researcher, director of the Madrid transport authority for four years, and director of the Valladolid bus network (north) for four years as well, recalls the Ministry of Transport in a press release.
“I would like to thank the Minister of Transport (…) for the trust he has placed in me. I am taking over the presidency of @Renfe with all the necessary commitment to live up to the expectations of travelers and its workers”, reacted on X the new president of the railway company.
His appointment comes on the same day that Ouigo Spain, a subsidiary of SNCF Voyageurs, announced the opening of two new lines, between Madrid and Seville on the one hand, and Madrid and Malaga on the other.
The arrival of Ouigo in Spain in 2021 marked the start of the liberalization of rail transport in the country and put an end to the Renfe monopoly. It was followed by the launch at the end of 2022 of a third railway operator, the Iryo group, owned by Trenitalia.
Alvaro Fernández Heredia’s predecessor, Raúl Blanco, had precisely expressed the wish to make Renfe “a reference operator throughout France”, an objective that the company is struggling to achieve, despite the opening of the Barcelona lines. -Lyon and Madrid-Marseille in July 2023.
Another of his challenges will be to improve commuter rail service, a sector in which incidents and reliability problems have often been singled out in recent years.
The group’s passenger branch, Renfe Viajeros, recorded a loss of 43.6 million euros in 2024, however an improvement compared to 2023 (65 million euros in losses). The gross operating profit (Ebitda) of Renfe Viajeros reached 338 million euros last year, up 17% compared to 2023 (289 million).
