The town of Alcoi has a long industrial tradition, in spite of its inland, topographically complicated location which was a major barrier to the export of its products. In an attempt to address this problem, narrow gauge railways were laid to communicate Alcoi with the port of Gandía and the broad gauge railway of the distant town of Villena. But the townspeople of Alcoi had their sights set on a more ambitious project; a broad gauge railway with a greater carrying capacity to provide a rail link to the port of Alicante, of greater importance than the modest Grao de Gandía port. Thus, under the auspices of the Guadalhorce Railway Plan, during the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera, a series of spectacular engineering works were undertaken to lay 66 km of rail bed and other railway infrastructure, using every engineering resource available at that time. The intervening Spanish Civil War and post-war hardship meant that the actual rails were never laid and the railway never entered into service. In the mountains of Alicante the railway became a memory of something that never existed.