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Long Term Implications of HSR on Small cities: Ciudad Real and Puertollano revisited 25 years after
the arrival of the HSR

Nowadays, this Polígono Industrial Avanzado is just above 50% occupied and activities do not
have the additional expected technology role. Nevertheless, in other parts of the city (by the
University Campus) a few industrial/consulting activities have been located, as if in this small
city proximity to the HSR station is not necessary since all the city is close to the station. This
lack of need to be close to the HSR station was already stated by Garmendia, et.al., (2008)
for residential location.
Nevertheless, other high technology related activities are developing at Ciudad Real in more
conventional locations, not in these territorial projects, for instance the University and the new
provincial hospital. These activities are getting consolidated, but not without some problems,
since the public expenditure reduction in parallel with a reduction of demand is probably
meaning that they are having less demand, since some of the persons that demanded them can
now solve their demand in higher class markets such as Madrid.

The conclusion that can be raised is that this city of Ciudad Real, although its great personal
accessibility improvement via HSR, is only being able to change its traditional role at a very
small pace, much smaller that it was expected, and over the existing urban land more so that
along peripheral new development projects. It has to be considered that both the airport and
the Don Quijote Kindom have a peripheral location.

In relation to Puertollano, Ribalaygua, et.al. (2004) did not consider any additional territorial
projects. Nevertheless, Puertollano has had several small size development initiatives, all of
them were initially proposed more than 10 years after the arrival of the HSR. These initiatives
are an industrial incubator, a technical school of plane pilots, several solar panel factories, etc.
most of them have lasted only a few years.

5. Conclusions

The two conclusions derived from revisiting these analysis undertaken 10-15 years ago in
these two HSR cities show that:
The change in the growth tendencies produced shortly after the HSR arrival:

• a positive change in the tertiary city of Ciudad Real between 10 and 20 years after
the arrival of HSR, that tends to be maintained after these first 20 years, with a slight
diminution tendency.

• a negative change in the industrial city of Puertollano until 10 years after the
arrival of HSR that tends to be maintained between 10 and 20 years and worsens
between 20 and 25 years

Thus, although some differences appear between the population analysis undertaken
10/15 years ago and those undertaken at present, no great differences are shown, thus
longer term population analysis do not seem to be crucial. Nevertheless, this is what
happens with a 25 year long term period of study, what this does not demonstrate is that
analysis undertaken with longer periods may not show greater differences. An additional
consideration if that the analysis has only been undertaken with population total numbers,
additional analysis of population age, employment, education level, etc. may provide
other evidences.

In relation to projects/plans, the conclusions of this study seem to point out that the projects/
strategies being developed 10-15 years after the HSR arrival could be classified in the long
term into three groups:

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 221