Line 12, also known as MetroSur, is a line of the Madrid Metro

Madrid Metro

The Madrid Metro is a metro system serving the city of Madrid, capital of Spain. The system is the sixth longest metro in the world though Madrid is approximately the fiftieth most populous metropolitan area in the world...

. Opened on 11 April 2003, Line 12 is a circular line that is not in fact in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, but links five suburban towns and one small village south of Madrid, serving around 1 million people. The towns linked by Line 12 are Alcorcón

Alcorcón

Alcorcón is a city in the metropolitan area of Madrid, Spain; , it had a population of 168,229. It is located 13 km to the south-west of Madrid....

, Leganés

Leganés

Leganés is a city in central Spain. Part of the greater Madrid conurbation - mainly a satellite-city with a population of 186,066 it is located about 11 km southwest of the city centre....

, Getafe

Getafe

Getafe is a city in the southern zone of the Madrid metropolitan area, Spain, and one of the most populated and industrialized cities in the municipality. The city is home to one of the oldest Spanish military air bases, as well as the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid...

, Fuenlabrada

Fuenlabrada

Fuenlabrada is a city and municipality located in the Madrid Metropolitan Area, Community of Madrid, Spain. It is located to the southwest of the community, 22,5 km far from the capital, and had a population of 197,836 in 2009. Is the fourth biggest town of Madrid after the capital, Móstoles...

 and Móstoles

Móstoles

Móstoles is the second-largest city in population belonging to the autonomous community of Madrid. It is located 18 kilometres southwest from central Madrid. Móstoles was for a long time only a small village, but expanded rapidly in the twentieth century....

. The village of Loranca, between Fuenlabrada and Móstoles, is also served by the line. The line runs underground, apart from a few stations at surface level. Line 12 uses 3-car trains of class 8000, but up to three extra coaches per train can be ordered if passenger numbers increase.

Total length is 41 km and 28 stations.

Line 12 stations have elements of art, such as the murals in the Hospital Severo Ochoa Station honoring the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winning biochemist, Severo Ochoa

Severo Ochoa

Severo Ochoa de Albornoz was a Spanish-American doctor and biochemist, and joint winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Arthur Kornberg.-Early life:...

. Surface level stations are covered by massive roofs, with some glass to allow daylight - a similar system is used in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 and Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

Metro systems.

There are plans to build two new stations: Fuenlabrada Oeste between Loranca and Hospital de Fuenlabrada, and secondly Fuenlabrada Este between Arroyo Culebro and Parque de los Estados. No completion dates for these new stations have been given, as they are still in the planning stage.