Every time there is free real estate, “let’s use it for terraforming.”
No. Let’s admit we are overpopulated and return more land to nature, before nature and wars do it naturally. It’s not because Spain is a half desert of sand that it’s not important for the Earth.
I live in France and I’m appalled that our ideology is both to be a welcome land for immigrants and “The young generation doesn’t have housing, let’s densify habitat and make fields constructible! It’s a human right!”
It’s a human right in direct contradiction with our kids’ human rights.
And it lasts hundreds of years and is super energy efficient. This isn't Ikea furniture.
Infrastructure cost should be calculated over years of service life.
Like poor people can’t buy bulk, real countries with limited budgets can’t spend freely for a 100-year project. It will be well worth it in the end, but you have to pay it all now.
Train connections in Spain are nice though.
I took a high speed train between Valencia and Madrid two weeks ago. Pretty nice experience. They have two generations of high speed trains in Spain. On the way to Madrid, the train was doing around 245 km/h between the two stops more or less consistently. It took a bit under two hours. On the way back, I had a different train that did 300 km/h over the same track. That train arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule even in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Total distance is 360 km (give or take). Both trains did their top speed most of the time and stopped twice. The average speed over that distance is well over 200 km/h for the newer train. That's way faster than the top speed of most normal trains and about the same as a small airplane would do (like a Cessna cruising at 110 knots/hour).
And that's factoring in that getting in and out of the big cities takes some time before it can accelerate. You lose 5-10 minutes on both sides going relatively slowly. The in between stops take a few minutes as well but it gets back up to speed quickly.
That kind of speed is not possible everywhere. You need special tracks and not too many detours/stops along the way. Spain is perfect for this because it's mostly country side outside of the big cities. High speed trains in Germany are a very different game. There are only a handful of proper high speed connections where the train can actually hit its maximum speed. Mostly it never gets over 160 km/h. Still, it's alright when you have the option.