The history of the railway in Majorca began in 1875 with the opening of the line between the capital, Palma de Majorca, and the main town in the centre of the island, Inca. That first line of what would become the “Ferrocarriles de Mallorca” network was later continued as far as Manacor, the capital of east Majorca, where it arrived in 1879. Then the next project was to extend the line to Artà. Work began in 1913 work and lasted five years, with the first train arriving in Artá in 1921.

Majorca's railway network peaked in the 1930s with 10 lines, 40 stations and 250 km of track (proportionally, twice as much as in the whole of mainland Spain). However, from that moment on, road transport began to get the better of the train. The island's railway, like that of the rest of Spain, began to decline, and in 1964 the first line, Palma-Santany, was closed, followed in 1967 by the one from Santa María to Felanitx in 1967, Son Bordils-Artá in 1977 and Inca-Sa Pobla in 1981. Some of these closures came hand in hand with the network’s change of gauge, from the peculiar "Majorcan yard" (914 mm) to the metric of FEVE, a company that had been operating the entire network since the mid-1950s. It was this change of gauge that led to a review of the remaining lines’ profitability, thereby leaving those two end routes, from Inca to Artá and Sa Pobla, out of the game.

It would not be until 1999 when the Government of the Balearic Islands would initiate a recovery plan for the island’s railway. In 2003 the Inca-Manacor line was reopened with diesel railcars (it would later be electrified), but the extension of the old route to Artá was pending. In 2009, the Government of the Balearic Islands began construction work to reopen the Manacor-Artà section with a train-tram project; all the civil engineering work were completed, including the Son Carrió workshops. However, work came to a standstill due to a controversy over the tram passing through the centre of Manacor, in addition to the serious economic crisis at that time. The project was therefore reviewed, and it was decided to stop it when all that was left was the installation of the line’s superstructure (tracks, electrification and signalling).

A new project was then conceived for the infrastructure to make use of the work that already been carried out, with the railway being transformed into a greenway under the supervision of SFM, “Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca,” which would also be in charge of its maintenance and management. The Manacor-Artà Greenway was opened in 2015 as the Balearic Islands’ first greenway.