Antequera (Málaga, 41,178 inhabitants) dreamed big at the beginning of the 21st century. The urban plans drew in its enormous municipal area two AVE stations, a huge railway logistics area, and even an airport along with hundreds of homes.
Except for the airfield, everything has become a reality in two decades. The last to arrive has been the Dry Port, a million-dollar project that seeks to merge freight transport by train and road. With it, the city “has all the opportune and optimal conditions to become the great logistics node of southern Europe, says the president of the Andalusian Government. The municipality has been a historic crossroads. Already in the Neolithic, it was, as demonstrated by its dolmens declared World Heritage, and the Via Domitiana Augusta confirmed it in the times of ancient Rome. Its geographical location, in the center of Andalusia, turned it many centuries later into a railway junction. The French parent company of the IDEC Group hopes to convert the Antequera logistics area into a benchmark for multimodal freight transport. There are still no established companies, and while the first warehouses arrive and are built – something planned for 2025 – the administrations are laying the groundwork. The space will serve as storage for containers that arrive at the Port of Malaga and Algeciras, but it will also be a place from which to send them—even with the truck that transports them—to Europe and to remote destinations such as China. "This project can become one of the most important in Spain. It is a before and after for Antequera if all the administrations push at the same time to meet the deadlines," says José Ramón Carmona, general secretary of the Malaga PP and Andalusian parliamentarian.