(Alcoi-Alacant project line)

This greenway passes through Ibi along a short stretch (1.5 km) of the Alcoy–Alicante railway line, which was never operative.

Project currently at the research and development stage.

The route’s conceptual origins date back to 1873, when Eleuterio Maisonnave was granted the licence to build a railway from Alicante to Alcoy. This project was never brought to life, and similar permits granted subsequently met the same fate. Only the plans presented by noted engineer Próspero Lafarga in 1911 materialised partially, though the construction works were eventually abandoned. 

The greenway’s physical history began in 1926, thanks to a plan for the urgent construction of certain railway routes (the ‘Plan Preferente de Ferrocarriles de Urgente Construcción’). The plan was created to organise Spain’s railway infrastructure, and one of the routes it incorporated was the Iberian-gauge Alcoy–Alicante line. This 66.2 km railway would be the culmination of an idea that had already been around for over half a century. It was an extension of the existing Xàtiva–Alcoy connection. This project – remains of which can be seen on three greenways, including the Vía Verde de Ibi – was drawn up in 1927 by civil engineer José Roselló Martí: he planned for general earthworks, masonry works and tunnels, drawing inspiration from past solutions designed by Lafarga, but he replaced some metal viaducts with other, cheaper, more functional ones made from reinforced concrete. In 1927, the press reported that the railway would definitely be opened. This was not the case.

Not long before the Civil War, once the earthworks were done and the masonry structures built (bridges and tunnels), only a couple of stations had been created (Alcoy and Agost) and the line had not been electrified yet. After the war, the construction of the remaining stations was put out to tender. However, various difficulties meant the works went on until the 1980s, at which point the project was definitively abandoned, without a train ever having travelled on its tracks. In 2002, Ibi Town Council started work on converting a 1.5 km stretch of the railway into a greenway, unfortunately without any original infrastructures.