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At the commencement of the world war in 1939, Francisco Franco’s authoritarian Spain was officially a neutral state in the global conflict※, this despite the Spanish dictator’s pro-Axis leanings and his debt of gratitude to Hitler and the Axis for its invaluable contribution to the Falangists’ victory in the recently-ended civil war in Spain. 

The Spanish Caudillo ⇪
Because of Franco’s neutrality path, Hitler was not able to make Spain and the Iberian Peninsula a base of war operations for the Axis side [L. Fernsworth (1953). ‘Spain in Western Defense’, Foreign Affairs, 31(4), 648-662, doi: 10.2307/20030996]. Notwithstanding this Franco’s Spain still proved a useful and even vital ‘ally’ to the Axis powers, especially to Nazi Germany, during the war. This was nowhere more evident than in the role played by a single railway which linked southern France to northern Spain. 

The track through the Pyrenees 
Before that story, first some background on the railway line and its remarkable ‘central’ station. The idea of a train line between France and Spain via the rugged and formidable Pyrenees mountain chain goes back to the mid-point of the 19th century. The first step to turn the dream into actuality started on the French side in 1904. World War I held things up, as did the fact that the project was an enormously hard, almost Herculean challenge to the railway engineering and building methods of the day.  To complete the line, in excess of 80 bridges, 24 separate tunnels and four viaducts had to be hacked out of the rocky terrain of the middle Pyrenees, as well as a massive deforestation of the regional landscape [‘Urban Exploration: Canfranc Railway Station’, Forbidden-Places, www.forbidden-places.net/].

The enormity of the Canfranc rail line earned it the sobriquet, “The Titanic of the Mountains”.  Finally, by 1928, it had become a reality. The line ran from Pau in France to the village of Canfranc not far inside the Spanish border▣.

Canfranc-Estacíon
Canfranc was the jewel in the crown of the whole international rail network. The railway station (designed by Fernando Ramírez de Dampierre), architecturally a mix of Art Nouveau and Neo-Classicism, was built on an XXL scale. Boasting some 365 windows, a linear monolith of concrete, glass, steel and marble, it had space for living quarters for both Spanish and French customs officials, an infirmary, restaurants and bars, and (later) a hotel. Effectively, the station’s “French section” functioned as a French embassy [‘3rd Reich’s Abandoned “Highway” For Stolen Gold’, George Winston, War History Online, 17-Jul-2019, www.warhistoryonline.com]. The platforms extended for over 200 metres in length! The station has been described as “perhaps the world’s most beautiful disused railway station” [‘The most beautiful abandoned train station on the planet’, The Telegraph (UK), 02-Oct-2017, www.telegraph.co.uk]. 

The train line’s commercial fatal flaw: the irregular Iberian gauge
Despite Canfranc’s imposing and glamorous edifice, the Pau to Canfranc line’s history is a tarnished and diminished one. Some have called it’s history jinxed. Right from the start of operation there were problems and drawbacks. The biggest structural flaw for a supposedly international railroad was that the gauges were different! Spain retained its broad-gauge rails cf. the standard-gauge in France and elsewhere on the Continent. Passengers had to change trains once inside the border, this proved even more disruptive for goods cargo…the need to move the load to another rail vehicle meant that ultimately the line was too slow (and therefore too costly) to transport goods freight. The Wall Street collapse and the Depression occurring just one year after the Canfranc line commenced didn’t help business either. And to complete the ‘cursed’ thesis, in the early years there was a devastating fire affecting the line. 

Throughout its lifetime the Canfranc railway always fell short of achieving economic viability. By the early 1930’s there were as few as 50 passengers a day using the service [‘Is Europe’s ghostliest train station about to rise again?’, Chris Bockman, BBC News, 01-Oct-2017, www.bbcnews.com]. To compound matters, during the civil war Franco had the line’s tunnels sealed off to prevent arms smuggling to the Republican side from France. 

(Photo source: www.canfranc.pagesperso-orange.fr)

The Nazi “Gold Highway” 
Following upon Hitler’s conquest of Western Europe the railway got a new lease of life, albeit one inspired by less than the purest motives. Franco reopened the tunnels to the Nazis and in 1942 deals were struck between the interested parties. Hitler and the German Wehrmacht needed the “Spanish (and Portuguese) ore”, tungsten (AKA wolfram), for producing metal and steel for the Nazi war machine—as much as they could get their hands on! And after the neutralising of France, the Canfranc line became a vital conduit for its delivery. The arrangements were mutually advantageous with plundered Nazi gold from Switzerland and French grain wending it’s way in the opposite direction to Spain and Franco⊡. US documents declassified during the Clinton years reveal that Franco returned only a portion of the stolen gold in 1948 (described as a “marginal amount”)—and that only after pressure was applied by the Allies [‘Secrets of the Railways: “Nazi Gold Highway”‘, (SBS Television, aired 03-Nov-2019)].

The reopened train line was advantageous not only to the Nazis and Spain. Refugees (Jews, communists, leftist artists like Max Ernst and Marc Chagall) and allied soldiers used the train and the Somport Tunnel route into Spain (and thence to safe destinations beyond) to escape Nazism.

The highly adaptable M. Le Lay ⇪

(Photo source: www.caminandoporlahistoria.com)

Spy and counterspy: Life imitating art
Despite the railway and the key Canfranc Station being in Nazi hands, the place was a hotbed of spying and smuggling activities. At parties and events held by Nazi officials stationed at the glitzy hotel, pro-Resistance railway workers gathered important intelligence and passed it on to the Allies. A figure instrumental in the espionage activities was the hotel proprietor Albert Le Lay. Le Lay had a dual role as congenial hotel host for the Nazi guests and as head of the local border control. This allowed him, in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the movie Casablanca with Le Lay the unsuspected Resistance spy resembling a real-life “Rick Blaine”, to undermine the Germans and help smuggle many Jews out of France [ibid.]. Le Lay’s dangerous game kept him one step ahead of the Gestapo, but in 1943 he too was forced to flee as the Nazi net was closing in on him.

Decline and fall…and rise again?
After the war the Canfranc railway stumbled on, still operating but never coming close to reaching the potential of its planners’ high hopes for it. An unfortunate mishap in March 1970—a train derailment on the French part of the line causing a bridge collapse—proved not just costly, but signalled the end of the road for the railway. The French authorities, despite the opprobrium heaped on them by their Spanish counterparts, flatly refused to rebuild it. The railway was discontinued, replaced by a bus service. The stock and buildings were left to be vandalised and run into the ground slowly—seemingly for good!

Recently though, a (belated) rescue plan of sorts has emerged. The Aragon municipality in Spain has signalled its wishes to resurrect the once grand Phoenix from the ashes. It has indicated it wants to open a new rail line on the location. There’s talk of a £350m restoration project to restore Canfranc to its long lost railroad glory. Encouragingly, the corresponding French provincial authority , Aquitaine, has offered to assist in the project. This life-line has prompted renewed interest in the rail relic from the public with new tourism accounting for more visitors to the train site than there had been passengers using the service in it’s heyday! [Bockman, loc.cit.; Winston, loc.cit.].

Footnote: Portugal in on the largesse

Portugal possessed the same raw material (wolfram) so prized by Hitler and Portuguese dictator Salazar was happily agreeable to a clandestine deal. Accordingly some of the stolen Nazi gold made its way to Lisbon via Canfranc and into the vaults of the Bank of Portugal. This is reflected in the figures which show a dramatic upsurge country’s gold reserves:

1939|63.4 tons|||1945|356.5 tons

[Neill Lochery, Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945 (2011)]António Salazar ⇪

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※ after the fall of France in June 1940 the official policy was modified to one of “non-belligerence”. Franco’s position of non-involvement was basically about not antagonising the western powers, especially the USA whose exports Spain depended on at a time its economy was still brittle after the civil war
✦ for instance Franco’s ‘neutrality’ didn’t prevent him from “green-lighting” Spanish volunteer brigades to fight for the German Nazi army (the Division Azul or Blue Division) against the Soviet forces (but not the Western Allies) 
▣ from Canfranc there was a further rail link to Jaca, and eventually to Zaragoza
⊡ estimated at close to 90 tonnes of gold (Winston)