When the Valencia–Barcelona railway line was laid in the mid-19th century, beaches were not yet the fashionable destinations they are today. No one found it odd that a huge embankment was built between the village of Benicàssim and its coastline, carrying the railway line above. Later on, urban and tourist development made that embankment an unsightly physical barrier. Together with the impossibility of adapting the old alignment to the modern requirements of rail transport, this led to the construction of a new variant, which made several kilometres of the old line no lopnger useful. Part of that section (through the Sierra de Oropesa) has been transformed into one of the most beautiful Greenways in Spain thanks to improvement works carried out between 2008 and 2009 by the Ministry of Public Works (Ministerio de Fomento) in cooperation with the Generalitat Valenciana, as an environmental impact offset for the new railway variant.