Oregonians in Barcelona '13: A ride on Spain's high-speed AVE trains (Part 1)

by Pat Casey, OIEC History Instructor

Part I: Introduction and background

I’ve been a passenger rail fan at since grade school, when I traveled overnight from Portland to Glacier Park on Amtrak, and my fascination increased in college when I took the train to and from Chicago a number of times. After graduating I rode my first European train and came away amazed how it blew Amtrak away.

Before this teaching assignment I’d never ridden the Spain's AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) trains, which are among the premier European trains that travel at least 150 mph.

Spain is an interesting story on that front – before the 1990s its trains were considered some of the worst in Europe, but now they’re among the best.

The first high-speed link connected Madrid with Sevilla in 1992, to coincide with Sevilla’s Expo 92 that year – and attracted no little controversy: detractors called it a train to nowhere (or worse, a train to Africa), and many noted that it seemed curious that Felipe González, the Prime Minister at the time, hailed from Sevilla. . .

High-speed rail reached Barcelona in 2008, with a Madrid connection which has proven so popular that one airline has seen its traffic drop between the two cities by half.

The network has grown and today Barcelona has high-speed connections with several major cities around the country, so my first decision was where to go? A link to Provence in France won’t go into service until this summer, but there is excellent service to Madrid as well as Malaga, Grenada, Cordoba, and Sevilla in Andalusia – which is Spain’s southern-most region and home to what most Americans associate with the country such as bullfighting, flamenco, and astonishing Moorish architecture. (All three are scarce in up in far northern Barcelona, where bullfighting is now even illegal!)

Sevilla and Córdoba made a convenient pair to visit and both offer amazing sights indeed, such as Sevilla’s Cathedral (third-largest in Europe and home to what the locals insist is Columbus’s tomb) and its Alcázar palace (where Ferdinand and Isabella entertained Columbus); and Córdoba’s Cathedral, or Mezquita, is an iconic forest of arches – one of the best-known images of Spain -- that was originally a Visigothic church, then a mosque, and then from the 1500s a church again.

Cordoba's remarkable, iconic Mezquita

Spain’s national rail company RENFE operates all AVE trains, which all require reservations. You can get these at rail stations, from travel agencies (Spain’s El Corte Ingles department stores all have them), or online. Many sources warn that RENFE’s own website www.RENFE.com is less than user-friendly and has a tradition of not accepting U.S. credit cards, so I was hesitant to use it -- but apparently the site has been upgraded lately because I found that, with a bit of effort, I was able to reserve everything and pay online (although as an Apple user I discovered the site likes Chrome or Foxfire way better than Safari).

The site has an English-language option that worked fine, although there were a few places that didn’t translate so I had to improvise. If you don’t enjoy that sort of thrill there’s also an easy-to-use U.S. website www.petrabax.com that’s directly connected to RENFE, but it adds a small surcharge and when I checked it did not allow same-day or next-day reservations.

If you have a printer RENFE’s website lets you print your own boarding pass; if not it issues you a six-letter code allowing you to print one at the station. I went this route and it worked flawlessly.

All AVE trains use Barcelona’s Sants station, which is user-friendly and has been recently renovated, but I found it a bit of a letdown – part of the fun of European train travel is the busteling 19^th Century iron latticework complexes like Paris’s Gare du Nord or London’s Victoria Station. Sants though was built in the 1970s and looks it: a big, stark rectangular building with all tracks below – sort of like a cleaner, easier-to-use version of New York’s Penn Station.

Main entrance to Barcelona's Sants Railroad Station

(Modern rail stations don’t have to be boring: Rome’s Termini is about the same vintage as Sants but it maintains the vibe and romance a Euro rail station ought to have, but I digress.)

So where shall we go? Sants Station's arrivals/departures board

My aesthetic issues aside, Sants station did accomplish its main purpose: getting to my train was easy and straightforward. As with airline travel you check in and put your bag through a scanner, but this version was way less intimidating and smoother than any airport security I’ve encountered. There is a big electronic sign in the middle of the station indicating which platform your train will use, and getting to the right one was no problem. Your ticket indicates your car and seat number, and the AVE cars have very well-marked, easy-to-find electronic signs so getting to where I belonged was a snap.