As with so many ambitious projects, its origins can be traced back to General Primo de Rivera and his Minister of Public Works, the Count of Guadalhorce. Their 1926 plan for railway expansion envisioned the creation of a lattice of new lines that would interconnect existing lines with the final aim of overcoming Spain’s traditionally radial network.

Thus, the Jara line was designed to connect Talavera de la Reina and Villanueva de la Serena, passing by the monastic town of Guadalupe and linking the valleys of the Tagus and Guadiana rivers.

Work began at a steady pace in the late 1920s. Legions of labourers —many of them local peasants employed as wage workers for the first (and last) time in these remote regions— hacked into untouched hillsides and poured tons of concrete across rivers, raising graceful viaducts. The line would ultimately start from the Calera y Chozas station, bypassing the already-served Talavera–Madrid–Cáceres section, since it was completely parallel to the Madrid-Cáceres line.

But history intervened. The Spanish Civil War struck the project a fatal blow, and the difficult postwar years, the rise of the motorcar and rural depopulation formed a lethal combination for the railway’s future. Construction faltered, but there was a brief revival in the 1960s thanks to the Plan Badajoz, which sought to irrigate vast tracts of farmland and required rail transport to move its produce. This push saw the completion of 50 km between Villanueva and Logrosán, which briefly carried irregular freight services. On the Castilian side, earthworks and stations were finished, ballast was stockpiled — the line was almost ready.  All that remained was to close the 20 km gap between the Extremaduran and Castilian stretches. But those last works were never completed. A report from the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development deemed the line uneconomic, and with that, this “stillborn” railway was abandoned to time and silence.