Ummm ... CAF is Spanish. Having them win a big contract with SNCF over the "home town" Alstom is in fact news.

My personal experience with CAF equipment is limited to their light rail cars sold to Sacramento in the 2000s. They mostly work OK, but seem to have higher power draw than the old Siemens cars from the '80s, and are more likely to stop working in hot (over 105F) weather though RT seems to have mitigated that tendency a bit over the years. They are supposed to be compatible with the old Siemens cars - able to run in mixed-unit trains - but that doesn't work well - communication issues and tendency for cars of differing types to work against each other at times - so it isn't done if it can be avoided. The trucks & suspension seem to be much more sensitive to track condition than the Siemens, and on higher speed sections bounce and hunt badly near the speed limit (over 50 mph, limit is 55) unless the rail has been recently ground (which happens maybe every 10-15 years...). On the plus side, ride under other conditions is smooth, operation is smooth (a few Siemens cars that have been retrofitted with chopper controls are smooth too), and the a/c is excellent (Siemens, not so much). I try to ride facing backward on the CAF cars; the braking is powerful. IIRC, they had notable delivery and quality control issues, and when the contract was done CAF shut down their assembly operation at McClellan Park for lack of new business prospects.

Incidentally, Sacramento has refurbished about 1/2 dozen of its scrap line of VTA cars (the VTA first generation - UTDC? - also used as starter cars in Utah and long gone there) and uses them on the Blue Line. They're *big*. They're also incompatible with everything else, so they only work in dedicated sets on that one line. Strange beasts. A couple of them were involved in the recent North Sacramento wreck.

Between the 1980s Siemens cars, the VTA cars, and the odd-man-out CAF cars, RT almost seems like an operating museum... Rumor has it that they're buying some Siemens low-floors, but I have no idea where the money is coming from; without a dedicated sales tax, RT is near-broke most of the time.