I view this announcement as political spin. Lemme explain.

In Spain, high-speed rail is in a fortunate political situation that both of the two main parties compete in promising to build more/better. Ahead of the last change at the helm, the main attack line of the then opposition Socialists (PSOE) against the conservative government's massive programme was centralisation: all the lines ran out of Madrid. The PSOE being a champion of the regions, they called for transversal lines.

However, in the Zapatero era, until now, there has been exactly one project started that can be called transversal (Murcia-Almería) -- and several stalled projects. To make up for that, from last year, the government aimed to polish up some Aznar-era projects West of Zaragoza. And now with today's announcement, a whole bunch of older projects have been re-packaged as a new Cantábrico-Mediterráneo axis:

1. Zaragoza-Teruel-Sagunto (the Southeastern half): the upgrade of the first half was started long ago, to function as a branch of the Madrid-Barcelona line. For the Aznar government, this upgrade was to be part of an ambitious project for freight trains: a normal-gauge corridor from the old Canfranc tunnel at the French border all the way down to the Mediterranean. Alas, France obstructed that by refusing to restore the line on their side.

2. The Y to Logroño and Pamplona was also planned as a branch of Madrid-Barcelona in Aznar times. However, the original plans were extra lean (part of it would have been a dual-gauge section shared with the conventional line...), and extensions to Vitoria were promised without a date, so the Zapatero government has definitely improved the plans here.

3. Miranda de Ebro-Vitoria-Bilbao/-San Sebastián is part of the main corridor from Madrid to the North (and eventually on to Paris) -- proposed already in the González era, first tendered in the Aznar era (violating some EU tendering conditions, so tenders had to be re-issued). The Basque Y from Vitoria is in construction.

• The Pamplona-San Sebastián loop. Rather than an addition, this ended up as a diversion of the end of the originally planned Pamplona-Vitoria line. Well, it's at least transversal.

• Bilbao-Santander: at the start of the Zapatero era, the PSOE had tow top ideas as signature 'transversal' projects: a line all along the Northern coast, and a spur to Santander from somewhere to the West of Miranda. However, the first doesn't promise high passenger numbers, while the second would reqire another expensive mountain crossing. What remained of the two ideas was this single section.