(Muro d’Alcoi – Villena – Yecla line)

The Vía Verde del Chicharra is officially sixteen kilometres long, from Las Virtudes to Biar, but it actually offers almost fifty kilometres of usable greenway overall. It runs along part of the narrow-gauge (1 m) Villena–Alcoy–Yecla railway line.

Project currently at the research and development stage.

Set up in 1882, the company Ferrocarriles Económicos de Villena, Alcoy, Yecla y Alcudia de Crespins was granted the licence for the Villena–Alcoy line and two branch lines (one to L’Alcúdia de Crespins, the other to Yecla) almost immediately. However, financial difficulties – reflected in the construction work’s slow progress – led to the company being seized by the state in 1893. At that time, only 53 km of the line had been built (31 km from Villena to Bocairent and 21 km between Villena and a temporary station in Yecla) and its service capacity was very limited. 

Not long after, the company re-emerged as Compañía de los Ferrocarriles Económicos de Villena a Alcoy y Yecla (VAY), and by 1906, the route had been extended from Yecla to Jumilla and from Bocairent to Agres. Three years later, the section between Agres and Muro was created: a significant development because it provided a connection to the Alcoy–Gandia line. Despite the company’s name, the line built by VAY never reached Alcoy. In 1965, Ferrocarriles Españoles de Vía Estrecha was granted the licence for this route, which was closed definitively in 1969, at the same time as the Alcoy–Gandia line.

With the turn of the century came calls to convert the route into a nature path, giving rise to a series of changes that, bit by bit, would create the greenway we know today. It stretches from Las Virtudes to Biar, in the province of Alicante: a sixteen-kilometre cycle or walking route that can be extended to almost fifty kilometres, thanks to works carried out by various institutions. Halts, huts and abandoned or converted stations are scattered along this greenway, which is also crossed by a number of bridges.