Europe’s unluckiest train station gets new lease of life as hotel

Once-grand Canfranc was known as the Titanic of the mountains, but fell into disrepair thanks to fire, derailment and war

It earned the nickname Titanic of the mountains", but now the monumental and ill-fated train station at Canfranc is to get a new life as a five-star hotel, 51 years after the international rail link across the Pyrenees closed.

The story of Canfranc, a village more than 1,000 metres (3,280ft) above sea level on the Franco-Spanish frontier, is one of vainglorious ambition and abject failure, of incompetence and corruption, of intrigue, smuggling and a century-long run of bad luck.