Why is Spain so obsessed with putting railways underground? I really don't think any other country is so compulsive about it.

As I write this, just off the top of my head there's projects for putting rail lines underground in planning or being executed in Granada, Lorca, Valencia, Dos Hermanas, Montcada i Reixac, Sant Feliu, L'Hospitalet, Torrelavega, Almería, Vitoria, Bilbao, Logroño, and likely a bunch of other places. Many of these towns have just a few hundred thousand inhabitants, so they're not precisely big cities. Add to those the train lines already put underground in places like Cádiz, Sabadell, Terrassa, Elche, Getafe, León, Zaragoza, Montmeló, Alicante and many more.

Many towns have their "historic demands" for burying rail lines which they've been insisting on for decades. At this point it's basically seen by citizens as a normal thing to put the rail line underground, a perception which I think is absolutely unique to Spain. They sometimes allude to people getting killed for crossing the tracks where it's forbidden, or literally ignoring the luminous signs, bells and barriers at the few level crossings left, as a reason for putting trains underground. Like they need to spend millions on pointless construction just because people are too stupid to not cross the tracks where and when they oughtn't to. But other times there's really no real reason other than "reee it splits the town in half".

Some places even have the train line already running on a viaduct or an elevation which is easily traversed underneath, and they still ask for the train to be put underground for aesthetic reasons. An egregious example of this is Girona, which has the train station on a perfectly fine viaduct.

And when they can't put the train underground they move the station to far outside the city, which seems like a really stupid thing to do. They did that in Burgos and will do it in Figueres as well.

I really can't wrap my head around it.