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Spain’s low cost train company Iryo launches Andalusia services

The high-speed train company Iryo began its services between Madrid and Andalusia on Friday, March 31st.

Published: 31 March 2023 09:36 CEST
Updated: 31 March 2023 13:36 CEST

Spain’s low cost train company Iryo launches Andalusia services

Iryo launches services to between Madrid and Seville. Photo: Sekau67 / Pixabay

More than thirty years the highspeed AVE began operating in Andalusia, the low-cost offer from Iryo, privately owned by Air Nostrum, Globalvia and Trenitalia, becomes the first Renfe competitor to offer services to Córdoba, Seville and Málaga.

The Iryo high-speed train, like Renfe’s AVE, takes just two hours and 30 minutes between Seville Santa Justa and Madrid Puerta de Atocha stations. It will also connect these cities with Córdoba and Málaga en route.

READ ALSO: Three new low-cost train services launch between Málaga and Madrid

The three Andalusian routes begin to operate this Friday with four daily services, two in each direction. The company has stated that they offer schedules from early in the morning until late at night, with competitive prices in four classes.

To open the routes, the operator launched the sale of 250,000 flexible tickets at €18 to travel on any date in 2023, a promotion that ended last Sunday, March 26th. Due to these sales, the company expects an average occupancy rate of 75 percent on its trains until the end of the year.

Iryo has even predicted that occupancy will reach 100 percent on some routes, which would be “good data driven by the start of Holy Week”, according to sources from the company.

READ ALSO: The best of Spain’s Semana Santa train offers

The Iryo brand began operations in Barcelona in November 2022 and has also expanded to Valencia, planning to continue opening new destinations this year. The services are due to arrive in Antequera, Alicante and Albacete on June 2nd and, Tarragona, on June 15th.

The company will also continue to increase the frequency of its services with the aim of consolidating the routes that it already has available until it has 100 percent of its fleet in operation from September 2023.

Iryo has invested more than €1 billion in its Andalusia services and plans to have a direct contribution to the Andalusian economy of €28.7 million in wages and regional taxes in 2025. It will also create 660 jobs for ground, crew, operations, maintenance and administrative personnel in this same period.

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Spain's Canaries rule out tourist tax and property ban for non-residents

The Canary Islands’ political sphere is attempting to appease their almost two million inhabitants with measures which will protect the islands’ nature from rampant overdevelopment derived largely from their ever-growing tourism industry.

This comes after on April 20th tens of thousands of protesters took the streets of all eight Canary Islands and European cities such as London, Berlin and Madrid under the slogan “The Canary Islands have a limit”.

READ ALSO: Mass protests in Spain’s Canary Islands decry overtourism

On Monday, President of Tenerife’s Cabildo government Rosa Dávila proposed an environmental tax, or ecotax, one of the main demands of the protests’ organisers.

Proceeds from this ecotax “would go entirely to the protection and recovery of protected natural spaces”, Dávila said, such as the Teide National Park or the lush laurel forests of Anaga Rural Park.

It is unclear if such an ecotax in Tenerife would take the shape of the usual tourist tax that exists in numerous cities in Spain and in 21 countries across Europe, which usually is a small amount added each day to holidaymakers’ hotel bill.

In any case, at Tuesday’s plenary session in the Canary Parliament the right-wing Popular Party opposed such a measure across the archipelago, with their leader and vice president of the islands Manuel Domínguez saying “we are not in favour of creating a tax for sleeping in a hotel, a caravan or a holiday home”.

The motion presented by centre-left coalition Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC) also included other proposals such as a moratorium on new hotel beds, banning the sale of properties to non-residents and limiting Airbnb-style holiday lets, suggestions the PP and other Canary political parties shunned.

The leader of the Canaries’ Ashotel and CEHAT hotelier associations Jorge Marichal has also unsurprisingly voiced his opposition to a possible tourist tax, shifting the blame instead onto the proliferation of short-term holiday lets and their impact on Tenerife’s rental market.

Banner at April 20th’s protest in Tenerife reads “Tourismphobia doesn’t exist, they’re lying, it’s the excuse politicians and hoteliers use to not introduce an ecotax nor change the tourism model”. Photo: Alex Dunham

An NC-BC spokesperson stressed that every 15 days a new emergency is declared in the Canary Islands – water, energy or housing – which is “evidence that something is colliding, that something is not right, and that’s what people expressed during these days”.

READ ALSO: ‘The island can’t take it anymore’ – Why Tenerife is rejecting mass tourism

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands both charge holidaymakers tourist taxes. Spain’s Valencia region was also planning to until the right-wing government now in power revoked the law early in 2024.

However, the measures that were approved by the Canary Parliament were charging an entrance fee to visit Tenerife’s key sites and natural spaces, from which residents of the Canary Islands would be exempt from paying, and no offering up anymore land to hotels and other tourist complexes.

For his part, the regional president of the Canaries Islands Fernando Clavijo, whose national party Coalición Canaria is also against an ecotax, has suggested that an “environmental VAT” would be a “more efficient” way of improving the quality of life of islanders, as it would redistribute the wealth of tourism and advance social policies.

The reticence of the governing elite to adopt drastic measures that will lead to a more sustainable tourism model in the Canaries is unlikely to go down well among disgruntled locals, whose turnout at Saturday’s protests prove how much they want change.

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