Traditionally, the gauge of the national railway in Spain, now managed by Adif, is 1668mm or 5 foot, five and five-eights inches, known as Iberian gauge. This gauge (originally 1674mm but then reduced slightly to allow interoperability with Portugal) was decided upon by a Parliamentary committee, after a report known as the Informe Subercase (named for its principal author) in 1844. Spain has 11791 km of track with this gauge.
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Since 1992, all high-speed rail lines in Spain have been built to standard gauge, 1435mm, providing direct connections without break-of-gauge with the French railway system. The high speed line that was projected to run from Madrid to Lisbon was also to have been built at this gauge.
A large metre gauge network also exists in the north of the country, linking Hendaye (in France) with León and Asturias. Some isolated metre-gauge railways also exist in Murcia, Catalonia and the Valencian Community. This was previously operated by FEVE (Ferrocarriles de Via Estrecha, Narrow Gauge Railways), but was taken over by RENFE in 2012.
The Madrid metro is built to a gauge of 1445mm, almost (but not quite) standard gauge.
The Barcelona metro is built to standard gauge, except line 1, which was designed for through running of trains from the national network.