Barcelona Metro Line 5
From Cornellà Centre to Vall d’Hebron, the blue line links Cornellà, L’Hospitalet and Esplugues with six Barcelona districts.
About Line 5
L5 has 27 stations and 18.6 km between Cornellà Centre and Vall d’Hebron. Besides Barcelona, where it runs through Sants-Montjuïc, Eixample, Sant Martí, Sant Andreu, Nou Barris and Horta-Guinardó, it serves Cornellà de Llobregat, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and Esplugues de Llobregat.
You can change to L9 Sud and L10 Sud at Collblanc, to L1 at Plaça de Sants and at La Sagrera, to L3 at Sants Estació and at Vall d’Hebron, to L4 at Verdaguer and at Maragall, and to L2 at Sagrada Família. At Diagonal, as well as L3, a walkway leads to Provença (L6 and L7), and L9 Nord and L10 Nord also stop at La Sagrera. Ernest Lluch has an interchange with the Trambaix tram.
Stations on Line 5
27 stations, 9 of them with an interchange to another line (marked with a ring and the colours of the other lines).
Cornellà Centre – Vall d'Hebron
27 stations
Timetable and frequency of Line 5
| Line | Mon–Thu | Fri & eve of holidays | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L5 | 05:00 – 00:40 | 05:00 – 02:40 | 05:00 – all night | all night – 00:40 |
Earliest first departure and latest last departure at any station on the line, for a week without public holidays. Each station page has its own times by direction.
| Line | Interval Monday–Thursday, 08:00 | Sunday, 12:00 | Measured at |
|---|---|---|---|
| L5 | 2.4 min | 6 min | Diagonal |
Average interval worked out from the trains per hour and direction that the operator schedules at that station.
History
Today’s line is two lines joined together. Line II opened in July 1959 between Sagrera and Vilapicina and reached Horta in 1967. From 28 January 1961 it ran trains with automatic driving using photoelectric cells, a system developed by the metro’s own engineers. Line V, or Transversal Alt, opened in November 1969 between Collblanc, then called Sant Ramon, and Diagonal, and reached Sagrera in June 1970. That day it was joined to Line II, provisionally; the 1984 Metro Plan made the merger permanent.
Towards the Llobregat, Pubilla Cases opened in 1973, Sant Ildefons, Can Boixeres and Can Vidalet in 1976, and Cornellà Centre and Gavarra in 1983. The extension from Horta to Vall d’Hebron began in 2002 and stopped after the tunnel collapse at El Carmel in January 2005; it resumed in March 2007 and the three stations opened in July 2010. Ernest Lluch, between Pubilla Cases and Collblanc, came into service in July 2021. In 2022 the names “Vall d’Hebron | Sant Genís” and “Congrés | Indians” were approved.
How the service runs
At Diagonal, on weekdays, L5 reaches 25 trains an hour in each direction in the morning peak, one every 2 and a half minutes, and 21 or 22 between 16:00 and 20:00. Around midday 17 to 18 run, one every 3 and a half minutes, and from 22:00 the interval stretches to 6 or 8 minutes. On Saturdays 11 to 13 trains an hour run during the day, and on Sundays 10 to 11. On Saturday night service is continuous, with trains every 8 to 12 minutes, and on Fridays it ends at around 2:00.
The trains
The whole line is worked by 5000-series trains, which began arriving in 2006 and eventually replaced the 1000 series entirely; before that, the 300 and 600 series ran here. The depots and workshops are at Can Boixeres, Vilapicina and Vall d’Hebron. Next to Can Boixeres the line is no longer plain double track, and you can see between 4 and 10 sidings.
Frequently asked questions
El Coll | La TeixoneraES, at 74 metres, is the deepest station on the whole Barcelona metro. The other two stations of the latest extension, El Carmel and Vall d’Hebron, are about 40 metres down.
It is a station built between Sant Pau | Dos de Maig and Sagrada Família for the old Line II that never opened: once that line was joined to Line V, it was too close to Sagrada Família. It survives with benches and escalators, has been used for filming and, when it is lit, you can see it for a few seconds from L5 trains.
On 25 January 2005 there was a first collapse in a reversing tunnel, and 1,057 people were evacuated from 84 apartment blocks. On 27 January the main collapse swallowed a garage on Carrer de Calafell into a crater 18 metres across and 35 deep. The cause was a geological fault the project had not foreseen.