MZA

Company History: The Compañía de los ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante (MZA) was a Spanish railway company established in 1856 and that it became one of the great companies of the railway sector along with its great competitor, the Compañía de los Caminos de Hierro del Norte de España.

This competition also came from the large financial families that competed at the time, the Rothschilds for MZA and the Pereires for the Norte. Starting from its first railroad concessions, it spread rapidly to take on some of the main lines of Extremadura, Castilla la Nueva, Andalusia or Levante, controlling an important market. The MZA was also the one that constructed the stations of Atocha in Madrid, El Carmen in Murcia, Campo Sepulcro (later of El Portillo) in Saragossa or Plaza de Armas in Seville, also known as station of Córdoba and at the moment reconverted in commercial center. With the arrival of the twentieth century, the Company was at the highest splendor of its operational history, although not long after the crisis made a dent in the company. The Spanish Civil War revealed to be the swan song for the company, that would be condemned because in 1941 the pro-Franco state decreed the nationalization of all the railroads to create the national company RENFE. From that moment, MZA ceased to exist.

Read more on Wikipedia (in Spanish) and on ferropedia.es (in Spanish).

Successor/Parent History: Renfe Operadora (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈreɱfe opeɾaˈðoɾa]) is the state-owned company which operates freight and passenger trains on the 1,668 mm (5 ft 5 21⁄32 in) Iberian gauge, the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge and the 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) metre gauge networks of the Spanish national railway infrastructure company ADIF (Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias—Railway Infrastructure Administration).

The name "Renfe" is derived from that of the former Spanish National Railway Network, RENFE (acronym of Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles—National Network of Spanish Railways) created on 24 January 1941 with the nationalisation of Spain's railways. As per EU Directive 91/440, RENFE was divided into Renfe-Operadora (operations) and ADIF (infrastructure) on 1 January 2005.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brief History: Spain, a country on Europe’s Iberian Peninsula, includes 17 autonomous regions with diverse geography and cultures. Capital city Madrid is home to the Royal Palace and Prado museum, housing works by European masters. Segovia has a medieval castle (the Alcázar) and an intact Roman aqueduct. Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, is defined by Antoni Gaudí’s whimsical modernist landmarks like the Sagrada Família church.