The Sierra de Alcaraz Greenway is built on the route of the railway which should have linked the cities of Baeza (Jaén) and Utiel (Valencia). However, it was abandoned before it was completed, but not before the rails were laid. A triple paradox condemned this railway to never entering into operation: it was born too late, when road transport was already starting to divert passengers and goods away from the railways; a terrible civil war blighted practically every project in the country; and, finally, its tracks passed through sparsely habited areas that with every passing decade were becoming more depopulated.

At first things looked promising for the section of railway laid in La Mancha and the project was well advanced, with only the signalling remaining to be installed. But only the trains serving the railway works themselves were ever to run on those lines since, in 1963, a damning report from the World Bank determined that this line and several more besides that were also under construction should never be commissioned, since it was considered that they were totally unviable and would drag the rest of the national railway system down with them into ruin.