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How to buy cheap train tickets in Spain

2021 has marked the start of major changes to train travel in Spain, with two new low-cost operators for the first time in the country's history and Renfe overhauling its ticket categories. Here’s how to find the best prices.

Published: 15 October 2021 12:05 CEST
Updated: 16 October 2021 09:18 CEST

A woman buys train tickets on an automatic ticket machine of the Spanish state-owned rail company Renfe, at the Principe Pio train station in Madrid, on September 5, 2019. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)

Renfe still operates the vast majority of train services in Spain. Photo: GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP

Get to know Spain’s new low-cost trains

Until recently, Spanish state rail operator Renfe operated a monopoly in Spain.

However, the arrival of French-owned low-cost Ouigo in Spain has shaken up things dramatically since May 2021, spurring Renfe to launch its own low-cost branch Avlo.

What does this liberalisation of the country’s railways mean for ticket prices?

Well, Ouigo is selling tickets for its high-speed service between Madrid and Barcelona (620 km/385 miles apart) for just €9, stopping also in Zaragoza and Tarragona. More routes are planned for the end of 2021.

Avlo, which is so far only operating a Madrid-Barcelona service with other stops, is selling tickets for as little as €7.

Not all tickets are going for that price, as our article above explains, but they’re still usually cheaper than most of Renfe’s high-speed Ave services.

Ouigo also plans to launch similar services between Madrid and the eastern cities of Valencia and Alicante on the Mediterranean coast by the end of 2021, and to the southern Andalusia region by 2022-23. Photo: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP

Buy tickets as early as possible

With so few services from the new low-cost companies, Renfe still dominates Spain’s rail network, so you still have to rely on them for most train journeys.

In this case, buying your train tickets months in advance will make a difference to the price.

For example, if you purchase it four months in advance, you could save up to 75 percent from the base fee under Renfe’s new ticket categories Básico, Elige and Premium.

However, some train users have complained about the fact that Renfe has cancelled the 25 percent discount passengers would get if they bought a return leg.

The new commercial structure affects the Ave (high-speed) and Larga Distancia (long distance) trains, i.e. Intercity, Euromed and Alvia.

Know what you’re paying for with Renfe’s new tickets

Understanding what Renfe’s new ticket categories each offer will help you to avoid paying unnecessary costs.

A Basic ticket is the cheapest option and offers the possibility of carrying up to 3 pieces of luggage as well as access to free Wi-Fi. You have to pay extra to add changes and cancellation cover as well as to choose seats however.

An Elige ticket (Pick and Mix as it’s been called in English) allows customers to choose between Standard or Comfort seating, as well as customise other elements of their ticket such as greater flexibility for changes and cancellations, changing ticket holder, the option of travelling with pets or seat next to yours vacant to have more space. The more perks you add, the more you pay.

And with the Premium ticket, the most expensive one, you have a comfort seat and food and drink brought to you. You can also make booking changes even when you have missed your train. You will also be entitled to change the ticket holder or to travel with your pet.

Make the most of Renfe’s new discounts

If you fall into one of the following categories, you can get further discounts on your Renfe train tickets, even if you have the cheapest basic ticket.

Children now get a 40 percent discount on all Renfe tickets, whereas before this was only available on the more expensive flexible tickets

Young people aged between 14 and 25 can get 30 percent discounts on AVE and Larga Distancia (long distance high-speed) and 25 percent discounts on Avant (Mid-Distance High-Speed) and Media Distancia (Mid-Distance) and Cercanías/Rodalies (Suburban/Commuter) trains.

It does involve buying a Tarjeta +Renfe Joven card for €50. Check if there are more discounts you can get by applying for a youth card in your region.

There’s also a 25 percent price drop for over 60s and people with disabilities with the Tarjeta Dorada (this Gold Card costs €6 to buy) valid for every day of the week.

Groups of 4 to 9 people get an 8 percent discount as well.

Renfe's new bright purple trains have been given the name Avlo – presumably to reflect that they are a low cost version of the more upmarket Ave trains. Photo: Renfe — Renfe’s new bright purple trains have been given the name Avlo – presumably to reflect that they are a low cost version of the more upmarket Ave trains. Photo: Renfe

Travel midweek

As Renfe has adapted its pricing model to the same demand-based system used by commercial airlines, it’s now more important than ever to travel by train at less busy times, avoiding rush hour and weekends.

This is when the biggest price drops of up to 75 percent will apply.

The new pricing system applies to both AVE and Avlo trains.

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Good tourist, bad tourist: How to travel responsibly in Spain

Barcelona resident David Mar doesn’t travel, but he thinks about tourism every day.

Tourists crowd the buses — essential for movement in a hilly neighbourhood like his. They leave trash for residents to discover in the morning. They shout and sing at night and wander drunkenly through the residential streets, ambling into backyards and pulling down laundry on clotheslines.

“It’s a disturbance that goes from when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night,” he told The Local Spain. “You don’t feel welcome in your own neighbourhood.”

Mar lives in Turó de la Rovira, on a 262-metre hill that towers over the city.

A viewpoint atop the hill called Los Bunkers de Carmel has gone viral on TikTok for its sweeping city views, bringing hordes of tourists to come drink wine, watch the sunset, and sometimes party into the early morning.

But for the residents of the surrounding Carmel neighbourhood — among Barcelona’s poorest — the consequences of this tourist explosion have been severe.

Mar was involved in a physical altercation with a group of four Australians, after he confronted them for tipping over parked motorcycles.

And last June a 76 year-old man was assaulted by a group of seven English-speaking youths after he tried to stop them from jumping a fence that had been put up around the Bunkers.

Such events are commonplace in Carmel, Mar says, with the post-pandemic massification of tourism provoking an unstoppable flow of Instagram-like-hungry travellers, fuelled by an increasingly lucrative industry whose interests often conflict with those of local residents.

“It collides directly with the most basic rights of those who live here,” Mar says. “Our right to housing, our right to transportation, our right to rest peacefully.”

With some 1.3 billion international arrivals globally in 2023, more people are travelling for pleasure than ever before in human history.

But as excessive crowds stress infrastructure and locals find themselves pushed out of their own communities, prevailing attitudes towards travel must be reconsidered if global tourism is to continue growing sustainably.

“Tourism isn’t a right, it’s a decision that you make,” Mar says. “And if you do it, you must be aware of the consequences it can generate.”

A couple uses a selfie stick to take a picture next to a banner warning tourists on drought alert in Catalonia, near Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Empathy abroad

Bartolomé Deyá Tortella, a researcher and the Dean of Tourism Faculty at the University of the Balearic Islands, says few tourists consider such consequences.

Instead, they embrace their inner hedonist and focus their vacation time on maximum pleasure for minimum price. This mindset might cause a tourist to forget their values and do things they’d never do at home.

“We all become capitalists when we practice tourism,” Deyá told The Local. “You think, ‘I paid for this, I’m on vacation, I’m having my moment of pleasure, I worked the whole year for it.”

Such thinking could explain why someone might respect quiet hours in their own neighbourhoods, but shout drunkenly in the streets late at night while on vacation.

Or why on a trip to Mallorca, where Deyá lives and works, a tourist might feel compelled to take a 10-minute shower — despite the water-stressed Mediterranean island’s near-drought conditions — while residents routinely shower in a minute or less.

Failure to consider saving water or respecting quiet hours comes down to lack of empathy, Deyá says, and our tendency to other the people whose communities we enter while traveling.

“Act as if you were in your own home,” he says. “If when you’re in your own city you don’t shout in the street because you know your neighbours are sleeping, why do it when you’re traveling?”

Social sustainability

Much has been said about environmental sustainability, but it’s easy to forget the social impacts of travel; how our interactions with local people and economies can change that society.

“When every one of us travels, it implies that the places where we came from are transformed, the places we pass through are transformed, and obviously, so are the places we arrive to,” Manuel de la Calle Vaquero, Vicedean of the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism at Complutense University of Madrid, told The Local Spain.

With this in mind, the most sustainable way to travel is by using one’s presence to positively impact the local community.

Or in other words, to leave a place better than you found it.

“When you jump on a plane, it’s important to make sure that trip counts for something positive,” says Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, a holiday company that collaborates with local partners to plan socially and environmentally sustainable vacations.

“I advise people to fly less, keep short trips flight-free – and, when you do fly, stay in a place longer and travel in a way that does as much good as possible,” Francis says.

Anti-gentrification banners addressing were already hanging from balconies in Barcelona back in 2017. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

Neighbourhood colonisers

One of the most significant ways in which tourism can alter the social landscape is through accommodation.

Not long ago, tourists and residents in Spain did not typically mix, with tourists sticking near their hotels, rarely straying into residential zones, Deyá says.

But today’s tourist has matured, and now expects novelty; an “authentic” experience that they can convince themselves distinguishes them from the thousands of other tourists expecting the same.

Nowadays they live among residents, in apartments instead of hotels, utilizing short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, which has led to the dissolution of boundaries between a city’s tourist and local zones.

Vaquero describes this new kind of tourist as the “anti-tourism” tourist, in the sense that they’re not interested in the sort of tourism promoted by governments and travel agencies, but instead consider themselves the explorers of new “authentic” destinations outside the typical tourist sphere.

“The one who wants to leave the traditional tourist circuit and supposedly goes looking for ‘authentic’ neighbourhoods — that tourist is obviously the coloniser,” Vaquero says.

The boom in short-term vacation rentals has led to what’s been dubbed the “Airbnb effect” in neighbourhoods worldwide, in which residents are slowly replaced by a constant flux of tourists. For landlords, vacation rentals can be far more lucrative than renting to residents, thus incentivizing them to evict long-term tenants in order to list their properties on Airbnb.

This is exactly what happened to Emanuele Dal Carlo. His landlord didn’t want to renew the lease on his small Venice apartment because they could make more renting it out on Airbnb. Like so many other Venetians, Dal Carlo had to move to the mainland.

To better understand the cultural erosion he saw happening to his city as a result of Airbnb, Dal Carlo enlisted the help of researchers to conduct a study, through which he discovered only 2,000 of the 3,300 Airbnbs in the city were registered with the government, and many were rented by foreign hosts with zero connection to Venice.

This means that much of the money tourists spend on accommodation never lands on the ground, thus eliminating any potential benefit to the local economy.

“What’s wrong is that the money available from tourism is not fairly distributed between workers and residents,” Dal Carlo says.

Dal Carlo now runs Fairbnb, an ethical Airbnb alternative which promotes “community-powered tourism.” Hosts are certified local, and the platform fees are put directly towards a social project in the local community, like food redistribution or sustainable energy initiatives.

As a tourist, the best way to avoid feeding the problem is by avoiding short term rentals when possible, Dal Carlo says, and instead booking accommodations with local businesses, like small independent hotels or traditional bed and breakfasts.

And if you absolutely must use Airbnb, Dal Carlo suggests booking with local hosts.

“If you’re traveling to Venice and your host is from Finland, ask yourself some questions,” he says.

An elderly local man on crutches waits to cross as a group of tourists using Segways squeeze by and into the narrow streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Whose fault?

In Spain, anti-tourism protests have crescendoed in recent weeks. The travel industry, it seems, has grown beyond its means, and locals are taking note.

To some degree, the problem can be traced to poor planning on the part of local governments and the unchecked expansion of algorithmic platforms like Airbnb.

Deyá points out that many government entities in Spain have welcomed tourist money, pursuing marketing campaigns without investing in adequate preparation.

“Tourism is the typical sector where many governments say, ‘ok, let’s leave it, because this works. Don’t touch it,’” Deyá says. “But there’s been no planning, there’s been no strategy.”

Back in Barcelona, the city’s public transport authority was involved in the promotion of the Carmel bunkers through its Bus Turistic webpage, encouraging tourists to come see the “spectacular views over Barcelona.”

The promotion was taken down on April 16th after continued anti-tourism protests from the Turó de la Rovira neighbourhood council, of which Mar is a member.

But as is the case with so many industries in a crowded world full of contradictions, the individual cannot be absolved of all responsibility, as one’s choice to participate in harmful systems enables their continuation.

No law or tourist tax will compel tourists to act with empathy, and the absence of such regulations should not be used to justify one’s bad behaviour abroad.

“The problem is that we’re hypocrites, and we think that it’s someone else who has to solve the problem,” Deyá says.

Mar, who’s never been much of a traveller himself, is no longer interested in traveling internationally after seeing what tourism has done to his city.

“So much of my city has become inhospitable for residents,” he says. “Because we’re truly suffering from it here in Barcelona, the concept of tourism disgusts me more and more.”

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