Spain noted a tiny improvement in the performance of rail freight in 2025. The sector’s market share grew to 3.47%, up from 3.33% in 2024. It is the first such positive dynamic since 2022.
The Spanish Shippers Association took 2025 data from the Spanish statistics agency and compared it with road transportation data from the transport ministry. It found that rail outperformed the road last year.
Trucks grew their tonne-kilometre performance by 0.37%, while trains did 4.9% more work. The end result is a modal shift of 0.14% in favour of rail.
It is clear that this modest modal shift is nothing to write home about. Spain is aiming to reach a 10% modal share for rail by 2030. Rather than consistently shifting freight to the tracks, rail’s modal share declined from 3.81% in 2022 to 3.33% in 2025. In 2015, rail still accounted for 5.05% of Spanish transportation.
Bad outlook for 2026
Spain is clearly not on the right track. To make matters worse, the Spanish Shippers Association expects a further decline in 2026. “The very slight recovery of the freight rail market share in 2025 comes on the eve of the collapse predicted for the sector by the end of 2026, mainly due to the impact of infrastructure improvement works and the incidents that are seriously affecting the railway this year”, it says.
The current 2026 trend points to a modal share of 3.05% for rail freight.