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TRAIN TRAVEL

Spain changes conditions for free train travel

Spain's state train operator Renfe has tweaked the terms and conditions for its free train travel offer in order to avoid 'ghost reservations'. Here's everything you need to know.

Published: 22 September 2022 14:54 CEST
SPAIN-FREE-TRAINS
Many services were fully booked with 'ghost reservations' days before their departure and preventing passengers who needed to buy a ticket from being able to do so. (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO / AFP)

Renfe has changed the terms and conditions of reservations on its free travel offer for regional Media Distancia services, valid until the end of 2022, in order to avoid ‘ghost reservations.’ 

Announced by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez during the ‘State of the Nation’ debate in the Spanish Congress in August, the free multi-journey ticket scheme is an offer on some trains operated by the state-owned train network, Renfe, including Cercanías, Rodalies (Catalonia), and Media Distancia (local and medium-distance journeys).

READ MORE: All you need to know about Spain’s plan for free train tickets

READ MORE: GUIDE: How to get free train tickets in Spain

But some passengers have been abusing the offer, it seems, by block booking tickets and never using them. In response, Renfe have tweaked their terms for taking up the offer on Media Distancia journeys.

Unlike on the Cercanías and Rodalies routes, which are also included in the free travel offer, on Media Distancia routes it is possible to reserve a seat, and some travellers have been making more than one reservation on the same route for different times through the day or week in order to secure a place, and then choosing the most convenient departure.

As a result, many services were fully booked with ‘ghost reservations’ days before their departure and preventing passengers who needed to buy a ticket from being able to do so.

This loophole was particularly widespread on regional routes in Galicia and Castilla-La Mancha, and from now on, Media Distancia customers can only buy tickets for a maximum of four daily trips (two return journeys) on Media Distancia trains, and can only buy the return journey when the initial journey has been made.

READ MORE: TRAVEL: Tourists in Spain will also be eligible for free train tickets

“It is a question of guaranteeing the good use of the free passes for recurrent travelers and that as many people as possible can benefit,” Renfe sources said in the Spanish media.

READ ALSO: How much can you save on public transport in Spain with the new state discount?

Renfe’s free train travel offer came into force on September 1st and will end at the end of the year, on December 31st. In order to obtain the offer, travelers must pay a €20 deposit that is returned at the end of the year if at least 16 trips have been made during the offer period.

According to Spanish newspaper El País, as of Monday September 12th, Renfe had already issued over 1 million free passes for Cercanías and Media Distancia trains. 

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TOURISM

Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain’s mass tourism measures haven’t worked

Regions and cities around Spain have tried several ways to slow down the negative effects of mass tourism on local communities, largely without any luck and not addressing the major problem underpinning it.

Published: 3 May 2024 09:27 CEST
Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain's mass tourism measures haven't worked

The Spanish tourism sector continues to grow, but so does opposition to it.

Increasingly in Spain in recent years, anti-tourist sentiment (sometimes veering into anti-digital nomad sentiment) is on the rise, and much of it is born from frustrations about mass tourism and gentrification and their impact on Spaniards.

READ ALSO: Why does hatred of tourists in Spain appear to be on the rise?

In 2000, 46.4 million tourists visited Spain. In those days, travellers (often from Northern Europe) flocked to the coasts to stay in the hotel blocks right on the beach. The classic Spanish holiday, if you will.

But things are changing. By 2023, that figure had nearly doubled to 85.3 million.

Yet during those 23 years hotel accommodation grew by just 7 percent. This statistic, cited by Juan Molas, President of Spain’s Tourist Board and cited in Spanish daily El País, reveals a lot about the Spanish tourism sector and why efforts to try and combat mass tourism (or its negative effects, at least) have failed so far.

Molas’ statistic begs an obvious question: where do the rest of those tourists now stay, if not in traditional hotels?

Increasingly, in short-term accommodation such as tourist rentals and, in recent years, Airbnbs.

READ MORE: ‘Get the f*ck out of here’ – Málaga plastered with anti-tourism stickers

There have been regular protests against mass tourism around Spain in recent months, notably in places like the Canary Islands and Málaga.

Anti-tourist graffiti has appeared in places such as Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, the Canary and Balearic Islands, places that face the brunt of mass tourism in Spain. Locals complain that the proliferation of tourist rental accommodation depletes the affordable housing stock, inflates the local property market, and prices them out of their own neighbourhoods.

Often, these sorts of tourist rental accommodations are unlicensed and illegal. In Madrid, for example, there are tens of thousands of tourist apartments in Madrid available through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking, and yet recent findings show that barely five percent have a municipal tourist licence in order to operate legally. 

“Neither the central administration, nor the regions, nor the town councils have done their homework on the illegal [accommodation] offer, which is the most important scourge of tourism in Spain,” Molas says.

Though the problem seems obvious to many, including experts like Molas, some regions of Spain have focused on other ways to try and limit mass tourism… and they haven’t really worked so far.

READ ALSO:

Tourist tax

Tourist taxes made big news in recent weeks when Venice began charging tourists on day trips to visit the tourist hotspot.

In Spain, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands are the only two regions that have implemented tourist taxes so far, although not with the express aim of reducing the number of visitors.

Rather, Catalonia taxes overnight stays while the Balearic Islands taxes possible environmental damage. Visitor arrivals have continued to rise despite the taxes.

In the thirteen years since the tax was introduced in Barcelona, tourist numbers have risen from 14.5 million to 18 million. Importantly, a moratorium on hotel construction has been in place in the Catalan capital since 2017, which has led to an exponential growth in tourist rental accommodation in the city.

In the case of the Balearic Islands, the annual number of tourist arrivals has increased from 13 to 14 million in the six years in which the so-called ‘ecotax’ has been in force on the islands.

Limiting cruise ships

Coastal and island resorts in Spain have also tried to combat mass tourism by limiting the number of cruise ships allowed to dock there.

In 2022, Palma de Mallorca became the first destination in Spain and the second in Europe, after Dubrovnik in Croatia, to make an agreement with major cruise ship companies to establish a limit of three cruise ships per day, and specified that only one of them could bring more than 5,000 passengers ashore.

In places like Mallorca but also in Barcelona, enormous cruise ships previously docked and released thousands of tourists into the city at once.

But once again, like with the tourist taxes introduced, a limit on cruise ship numbers, although welcome, misses the point — cruise ship customers sleep on the ship, not in the real problem underpinning Spain’s mass tourism model: accommodation.

Tourist accommodation

Varying legislation restricting Airbnb-style rentals has already been introduced in recent years in cities such as Valencia, Palma, Seville, Tarifa, Madrid, Barcelona, and San Sebastián, with varying degrees of success. 

The number of short-term rental accommodation has exploded in Spain. They are particularly popular with remote workers and among digital nomads with the foreign spending power to price out locals. Recent data shows that in the old town of Seville, over half of residential homes are used for tourism. In the area of ​​Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, 28.3 percent are tourist apartments, while the figure stands at 18.3  percent in the centre of Valencia.  

READ MORE: How Spain’s Asturias region plans to limit short-term holiday lets

Tourist taxes and limits on cruise ship numbers are welcome. But they appear to be doing little to tackle the true underlying problem with Spain’s mass tourism model.

For now, measures are being rolled out largely on a regional level, but it may require the national government to step in and legislate, as it did when it scrapped the Golden Visa earlier this year, although again the effectiveness of this measure has also been questioned. 

READ MORE: Is Spain’s decision to axe golden visa about housing or politics?

Increasing the social housing stock more generally would also go some way to alleviate the pressure on Spaniards struggling to pay rent or even find a home.

Tourism is a double edged sword in Spain. The tourism sector has long made up a significant proportion of Spanish GDP and provided employment for locals, but the model it currently has is outdated, it inflates property markets, angers Spaniards, and creates tension between tourists and locals.

In 2023, international visitors spent €108 billion in Spain, 17 percent more than in 2019. Spanish travel industry association Exceltur forecasts that in 2024 it will surpass €200 billion for the first time.

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

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