La Estación, Spain --

On a crisp Saturday last fall, Luis Valciente and Mercedes Martin enjoyed the quiet of their farm about 20 miles northeast of Seville.

The retired husband and wife bought their patch of land in 1987, several years before Spain's first high-speed trains started running between Madrid and Seville.

"It's very tranquil, which is what we like after all these years," Martin said through an interpreter.

Without warning, a loud "swoosh" briefly interrupted the couple's conversation with a reporter. It was one of Spain's AVE high-speed trains rushing from Madrid to Seville on tracks about 100 feet from the rear of the couple's modest home. Within seconds, the noise subsided and the couple resumed their chat.

To passengers aboard the train, the Valciente farm is little more than a blur at the side of the tracks about 10 minutes before they get to Seville, the southern terminus for the trains. Each train sends fresh activity through the station and a small surge of cabs, cars and pedestrians onto the busy streets near the historic city's commercial center. Nearby restaurants, shops and rental-car agencies vie for attention from the new arrivals.

Spain's system connects major urban centers and smaller provincial capitals while crossing fertile agricultural regions - much like California's planned high-speed rail system.

In the countryside, Barcelona transportation engineer Andreu Ulied said, the Spanish government went to great lengths and expense to minimize effects on farms. They skirted farmland where they could, built frequent overpasses and underpasses, and generously compensated owners who lost property to the project.

In larger Spanish cities such as Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Cordova and Barcelona, stations for high-speed trains are in developed, central-city commercial districts. In Barcelona, preservationists' fears about a train tunnel under the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia forced extensive engineering measures to avoid damaging the church.

Most merchants doing business near the stations say high-speed rail is good for commerce, although they are unsure whether it has directly helped their stores and restaurants.

But Ulied, economist GermÀ Bel and others say the prospects for economic gains by high-speed rail cities are murky at best, and at worst the service could bleed commerce from smaller cities between larger destinations along the routes.

'We don't even feel them'

Valciente and Martin, who are in their 70s, tend to orange and other fruit trees and corn on their 6 1/2-acre farm. Chickens roam uncaged, pecking at the dirt around the pomegranate trees, pepper plants and cacti in the yard.

The AVE trains speed by the small farmstead several times an hour, "and it hasn't affected us at all," Valciente said.

"We don't even feel them," added Martin. Even though their house is close to the tracks, she said, the trains create no wind turbulence and are less bothersome than slower-moving regional commuter trains because noise from the AVE trains passes so quickly.

Because conventional trains were already there when Valciente bought the farm, he doesn't think the AVE trains affected his property value, and if the neighbors have any complaints, he says he hasn't heard them. In fact, high-speed rail raised little, if any, opposition from Spain's agriculture industry.

That experience stands in contrast to the loud and growing objections to California's plans by some farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, where faith in the state rail authority and the economy are in short supply. Growers and ranchers say they fear losing farmland and even their homes to the tracks, they worry that tracks across their land will keep them from moving easily across their fields, and they doubt they'll be fairly compensated for their property or troubles.

In Spain, the government worked with farmers from the outset to head off such concerns, said Pedro Pérez del Campo, environmental policy director for ADIF, the government-owned company that runs the track system.

"It's in our interest to make it easier for the farmers," he said, speaking through an interpreter. Pérez del Campo said the first priority is to make sure that farmers whose properties are divided by the tracks can still reach the other side of their land.

"About every 500 meters, there is the ability to pass from one side of the rail to the other," he said. "We are obligated that if the rails were to cross your property, we have to give you the ability to cross."

That access doesn't come cheap. To prevent collisions, bridges and tunnels carry roads over or under the line. There are no at-grade crossings. Likewise, California proposes to build its high-speed line without at-grade crossings, although it's not clear how many crossings there would be for farms in the San Joaquin Valley.

Cities get tourism boost

In Spanish cities, high-speed trains drive tourism - the nation's biggest industry - and business travel, the government says.

Madrid, Ciudad Real, Cordova and Seville, all located on the oldest high-speed line, saw greater growth in hotel beds than the nation as a whole after the line connecting them was launched in 1992, Spain's Ministry of Public Works reports. Collectively, the four cities grew from about 70,000 hotel beds in 1990 to more than 130,000 in 2007.

The public works ministry also boasts of job creation related to high-speed rail: about 115,000 jobs building it and an additional 35,000 running it. In cities along the lines, the government said, more than a dozen companies involved in high-speed rail engineering, manufacturing, operations and maintenance are investing about $17 billion to develop 1,700 acres for offices, plants and yards near stations.

But academic researchers say it's difficult to measure the effects of high-speed rail on commerce, employment and the economies of cities and regions. Most of Spain's high-speed lines are too new to have made a significant mark, and experts are looking at how to distinguish the influence of high-speed trains from other economic factors - especially when stations are built in established city centers.

Merchants see benefits

Merchants interviewed near the train stations mostly spoke favorably when asked about the high-speed network.

Bar Carlos Alberto is a typical Spanish bar/restaurant, perched on a busy intersection in Seville for more than 20 years. During a weekday lunch hour in November, the bar was bustling with customers nibbling on deep-fried prawns and anchovies or paper-thin slices of Iberian ham.

Manager Isabel del Morel gazed across a traffic circle at the large Santa Justa Station, where Spain's high-speed AVE trains come and go 18 times a day.

The bar was going strong when the train station opened in 1992 to serve the new trains, del Morel said. But the trains, she added, "helped a lot because people come off the train and when they're hungry, they bring in more business."

In Valencia, candy shop owner Vicente Garcia has a different perspective, tempered by Europe's economic struggles.

Spain's newest high-speed service, between Madrid and Valencia, started in December 2010. There are 13 round-trips on AVE trains each day, and each train can carry up to 365 passengers.

"I think it brings more tourism to Valencia," said Garcia, who owns Casa de los Caramelos. "But it's come at a time when there is an economic crisis, so that has an effect."

Experts say there is potential, but no guarantee, that cities with high-speed rail stops will see significant, lasting economic benefit.

"I don't think there's a clear relation between the high-speed rail investments and the economic performance of cities," said Ulied, the engineer. "But it largely depends on the strategies in place."

Smaller cities may suffer

Bel, a professor of political economics at the University of Barcelona, said it's much more likely that smaller cities along the line between Madrid and the larger destinations suffer economically because most of the travel and commerce by residents flows to the big cities.

In California's San Joaquin Valley, economic development officials have high hopes for more and faster high-speed rail connections from Fresno, Bakersfield and Merced to the Bay Area and Southern California.

"There are examples in the valley now," said Steve Geil, CEO of the Fresno County Economic Development Corp. "You have the ACE (Altamont Commuter Express) trains that run from Stockton to Santa Clara, a two-hour train ride that people commute on every morning and afternoon. Can you imagine when we can go in an hour to the heart of San Jose from Fresno?"

This project is the result of a partnership among California news organizations covering the state's high-speed rail program. They include the Fresno Bee, the Bakersfield Californian, California Watch, the Sacramento Bee, the Orange County Register, The Chronicle, the (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, U-T San Diego, KQED, the Merced Sun-Star, the Tribune of San Luis Obispo and the Modesto Bee. E-mail Tim Sheehan at