To have or not to have a train, that is the question... now that it is necessary to decarbonize mobility and also in the mid-19th century, when the alternatives were the stagecoach and the tartane. Barcelona, Mataró and the coastal municipalities in between, which were the first on the Iberian Peninsula to have access to the railway, 175 years later continue to benefit from the most efficient and sustainable land transport in whose surroundings one of the most dynamic regions of Spain is articulated. Catalonia.
There is a certain element of chance in which the Barcelona-Mataró train was the pioneer. Since 1829, the Spanish Government had granted several licenses to build “iron roads” like those already had by England, France and the island of Cuba, among others, but no promoter had come forward. At that time, the State facilitated the management of expropriations and granted concessions, while everything else was left in the hands of the entrepreneurs. And the most tenacious of all was the businessman from Mataroni, Miquel Biada i Bunyol, allied with the financier Josep Maria Roca and other Catalan and English patricians.
Biada had to overcome difficulties of all kinds to carry out the project of his Companyia dels Camins de Ferro from Barcelona to Mataró. But it had geography as an ally: the platform for the lanes and crossings could be enabled parallel to the coast for 28.4 kilometers following the Camí Ral (later N-II), a route with minimal slope and largely public domain in which the only major works would be the tunnel under the Montgat hill – since then called Muntanya Foradada – and a 317 m wooden bridge over the Besòs.
The Maresme was thus confirmed as the preferred communication corridor between the plain of Barcelona and the north of the country. If the Romans had made the Via Augusta pass through – more or less where the C-32 highway runs – to quickly mobilize the legions, the train is offered as an instrument to accelerate the industrial economy. The emerging bourgeoisie relies on this to quickly and cheaply move raw materials and manufactured products. Later it will serve to colonize beautiful holiday enclaves, as witnessed by the colorful summer towers scattered throughout the towns of Maresme, and attract labor.
The powerful industry-railway binomial explains the successive waves of migration that have transformed the demographics of Maresme. The most notable are located in the middle of the 20th century, when thousands of people from Spanish regions such as Murcia, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia settled, and at the beginning of this century, when the protagonists came mainly from outside Spain. In fact, they continue to arrive: Mataró's balance with foreigners is more than 8,000 inhabitants gained in the last four years, with countries such as Morocco, Colombia, Argentina and Senegal as the main emitters, according to the population study prepared by the Service of Strategy and Governance of the Mataró City Council.
La Mataró, which on October 28, 1848 enthusiastically received the first steam train from Barcelona, was a city of about 14,000 inhabitants; The latest registry shows the figure of 129,892, with a growth of 23% since 2000 thanks to positive migration balances. This demographic dynamism, which is also economic, is typical of the second metropolitan crown, a territory in which 38% of the population and 10% of the industrial fabric reside, which stands out for its growth and which since 2021 has a voice own: the Arc Metropolità, the alliance of nine medium-sized cities—Mataró among them—united to make themselves heard in strategic planning matters. All nine, by the way, are cities with trains.
Paradoxically, the Barcelona-Mataró line remains very similar to the original in its route (practically only the entrance and exit from Barcelona has changed, which since 1989 has been through the Aragó tunnel and not through Poblenou), but its operation is has revolutionized to multiply its capacity, safety, speed, comfort and therefore the backbone potential of the territory it serves. Thus, the current R1 line of Rodalies de Catalunya operated by Renfe has become the one with the highest demand on the network.
The line began in 1848 with six trains a day in each direction, taking one hour to complete the entire journey, with stops in Badalona, Masnou, Premià and Vilassar. Thanks to the doubling of tracks, carried out between 1901 and 1905, the successive application of technological improvements and the adoption of the most modern rolling stock, the R1 of Rodalies de Catalunya offers a hundred daily trains in each direction that cover the same route in 35 minutes. but with five more stops: Sant Adrià de Besòs, Montgat, Montgat Nord, Ocata (temporarily canceled due to works) and Cabrera de Mar / Vilassar de Mar. All this is in some way the legacy of the visionary Miquel Biada and the background of the celebrations these days around the 175th anniversary of the inauguration of the line, which its promoter could not launch because he had died a few months before.
Biada is permanently remembered in the Cercle Històric that bears his name, created in 2004. A secondary school in Mataró also honors him, as do a handful of streets in towns such as Mataró, Argentona, Cabrera, Pinar and Saint Fost. Since 1998, it has also been present in the Saints' Festivals through the figure of the dwarf Biada, a creation by the artist Sergio Laniado who represents the bust of the entrepreneur with a train on his head, so that there is no possible confusion.
