Spain, trains & growing pains
And getting its world-class rail system back on track.
Quiet and punctual. Spanish trains are everything Spaniards are not.
But the image of the country’s revered railway network has begun to crack.
My podcast library reflects the mood of now:
El Mundo: “New railway chaos - what’s going on with the trains?”
El País: “Why are so many trains arriving late?”
“In Spain, the pride in having one of the world’s largest high-speed rail networks has been replaced by the feeling that trains are a source of problems,” wrote Cristina G. Bolinches in elDiario.es.
It’s been a bad Spring for Spain’s trains. A bad couple of years.
During the April 28th blackout, more than 35,000 of people across the country were trapped in carriages in the middle of nowhere. Some spent 24 hours in their seats.
A week later, at the end of the May bank holiday weekend, the theft of copper cable halted high-speed trains operating between Madrid and Andalusia, leaving many passengers stranded.
The disruption affected over 10,000 people and at least 30 trains across major cities including Seville, Malaga, Valencia, and Granada.
With copper prices rising in recent years, cable theft from train and telecommunications networks has intensified, exposing the system's poor surveillance. According to El País, “anyone with basic knowledge and the intent to cause harm can jeopardize a line or a significant part of the network.”
Transport is a bad-news business - nobody writes a letter to El País when their Zaragoza to Madrid service arrives into Atocha two minutes early.
No, Renfe (Spain's national state-owned railway company), and new low-cost providers Iryo and Ouigo, only make the headlines when things go wrong.
Nonetheless, the arrival of these two rivals has broken up Renfe’s monopoly and helped democratise train travel. Ticket prices have fallen by an average of 40% between 2019 and 2023.
Today, you can go from Madrid to Barcelona in just 2 hours and 37 minutes for as little as €15. When I moved to Spain in 2016, that same journey typically cost four to five times more.
When Renfe’s AVE launched in 1992, it operated just six trips a day each way between Madrid and Seville. Today it runs over 350 high-speed services daily.
There are more competitors and more trains - so why has Spain’s gold standard service deteriorated?
“With three companies now sharing tracks once used solely by Renfe, people are asking: could the system buckle under its own success?,” wrote Javier Magariño in El País. “Is the infrastructure that Renfe used alone capable of handling the traffic from three companies?”
Growing pains
Blackouts and cable theft may have grabbed headlines in recent months, but the rail fails had been accumulating gradually before compounding suddenly.
In 2019, 17.3% of services ran late; by 2022, that figure had crept past 24%. It hasn’t been a collapse, but a slow erosion - drip feeding the perception that, like so many other public services, Spain’s once-prized rail infrastructure is quietly falling into decline.
There are two main factors at play:
The trains: A sharp drop in investment after the 2008 financial crisis left Spain’s aging trains being pushed to cover more miles. In 2016, Mariano Rajoy’s government ordered 30 Talgo Avril trains - 20 didn’t enter service until May 2024.
Within just two and a half months, Renfe had logged 479 incidents with this fleet. Last August, a train carrying 494 passengers broke down near Madrid’s Chamartín station, trapping them for over two hours in 40°C heat without air conditioning. Desperate passengers resorted to smashing windows to escape.
The infrastructure: According to The Independent Trade Union of Civil Servants (CSIF), the “railway chaos” is also a consequence of the previous government's lack of investment in infrastructure. The trade union released a statement last October calling for a revamp of the country’s aging rail corridors:
“The infrastructure can’t cope with the current volume of traffic, which has surged due to the addition of new high-speed, medium-distance, and commuter train fleets, as well as private low-cost operators.”
El País highlights the flaws of the current cure-is-better-than-prevention approach to rail maintenance:
“If there’s a problem with infrastructural wear and tear, it’s because no government in Spain has yet dared to shut down a line for maintenance, as happens in Germany or in metro networks. Instead, they patch things up while keeping trains running.”
Investment in transport infrastructure as % of GDP (Maroon = total investment, grey = railway).
El País explains that the challenges run deeper than increased traffic and accumulated wear and tear:
“Spain’s rail map has expanded both in distance and complexity. The country now operates with a mix of track gauges - standard, Iberian, and metric - as well as electrified lines and others still running on diesel. There are different voltage systems, multiple signaling and safety protocols, and several competing operators. It’s a breeding ground for problems. On top of that, the infrastructure has a well-known quirk: if one train stops unexpectedly, it blocks those behind it - often triggering a full-blown collapse.”
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Worth the wait?
The last five years have exposed the growing pains of a creaking system. But it must also be pointed out that ongoing infrastructural developments - aimed at modernising and expanding the network - have also contributed significantly to the delays and disruption passengers now experience.
And nowhere is this more visible than at Chamartín, which La Vanguardia has called the “epicentre of the rail transport chaos.”
A 2018 study projected that 10 million passengers would pass through Chamartín annually by 2024, rising to 12 million by 2040. Last year the station crossed that mark 16 years ahead of schedule as 13.9 million people squeezed through a station in the middle of reconstruction.
“We’re forced to run a service planned for 2040 in a concourse reduced to 2,600 m² instead of the intended 10,000 m²,” said Transport Minister Óscar Puente. “The station can’t handle the passenger volume, with trains carrying up to 1,000 people departing every 10 minutes.”
During the first quarter of 2024, nearly five times as many people passed through Chamartín compared to 2019. Renfe closed out the year with a record-breaking 537 million passengers, surpassing the previous high of 528 million set in 2006.
It’s been a rocky start for Puente, who took office in November 2023. The criticism in the media has been incessant. “The only thing I’ve yet to hear is that under Franco the trains ran better,” said the pugnacious PSOE politician and prolific tweeter.
Last year, he caused huge diplomatic row after suggesting Argentina's president Javier Milei had used drugs.
Under mounting scrutiny, Puente has pushed back against claims of abandonment, insisting instead that the disruptions are the byproduct of “the largest volume of works in our history” as the government attempts the difficult balancing act of maintaining service while overhauling critical infrastructure.
But this isn’t just a national issue. Regional services are faltering too, particularly in Catalonia, where the Rodalies commuter and regional rail system has become synonymous with delays and dysfunction.
In an El País podcast, journalist Alfonso L. Congostrina pointed out that between 2009 and 2023, Catalonia suffered from €40 billion in infrastructure underfunding. The Plan de Rodalies de Barcelona (2008–2015), which had promised €4 billion for modernizing the region’s commuter network, ended up executing just 13.5% of that budget.
The result is a chronically underperforming system where passengers often say they arrive late no matter what time they leave, and Rodalies registers nearly ten times as many incidents as Madrid’s Cercanías network.
Too big to rail
Renfe is having a rough ride.
In early 2023, it emerged that the company had wasted €258 million on 31 new commuter trains that were too wide for the tunnels in Asturias and Cantabria. The blunder couldn’t have come at a worse moment.
The costly misstep in the north was emblematic of deeper issues now surfacing across Renfe’s entire network - regional or high-speed, the cracks are showing.
Speaking to El País, Jacob Benbunan, founder of Saffron Brand Consultants, was blunt in his assessment of Renfe’s eroding reputation:
“Once a source of national and international pride for its impeccable service, the AVE's image has sharply deteriorated. It’s gone from being a historic guarantee of punctuality to facing endless delays. The transition from monopoly to competition has exposed flaws in Renfe’s management. It’s the classic outcome of putting the incumbent up against new challengers - just like we saw in the telecom sector.”
Back in 1992, when the AVE launched, a ten-minute delay meant a 100% refund.
But Renfe has since shifted the goalposts and passengers are no longer protected by such strict punctuality guarantees.
Prior to announcing changes to its delay compensation policy in July 2024, AVE passengers were entitled to a 50% refund for a 15-minute delay and 100% back after 30 minutes. Under the new scheme, only delays over 60 minutes will qualify for any refund, and full reimbursement won’t kick in unless the train is more than 90 minutes late.
Renfe is giving itself more breathing room to be late - without paying for it. It’s another move that has undermined public confidence in the brand. It feeds into the feeling that, nowadays, corporations have to show less accountability than citizens.
An unnamed former senior official at the Ministry of Transport told El País that “passenger dissatisfaction hasn’t yet reached the point of no return - but we’re getting close.”
Getting back on track
Unlike Spain’s housing crisis, I’m optimistic about Spain being able to make its trains great again. Mainly because it’s something that benefits all voters - with housing, a significant portion of the electorate profits from runaway rent prices.
But among the train chaos there are green shoots. Work is being done, money is being spent.
In 2024, the Spanish government invested €10 billion euros in national infrastructure, the highest figure in 13 years. €5.63 billion went directly to rail - 2.5 times more than in 2017.
And as Ben Hopkinson wrote for Works in Progress, if there’s any country that knows how to get value for money with transport infrastructure, it’s Spain.
“Madrid was able to build so much (its metro system) because of one thing: low costs. The 35-mile (56 kilometer) program of expansion between 1995 and 1999 cost around $2.8 billion (in 2024 prices). New York’s 1.5-mile extension of the 7 subway to Hudson Yard cost about the same (adjusted for inflation). London’s Jubilee Line Extension, built at the same time as Madrid’s expansion, cost nearly ten times more per mile than Madrid’s program. The World Bank described Madrid’s costs as ‘substantially below the levels that were internationally considered possible’. Since the 1990s, Madrid, and Spain as a whole, has continued to build infrastructure at some of the lowest costs in Europe.”
When speaking about the development of the city’s metro during his tenure, former Madrid mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón once said: “We promised 50 kms of new metro lines and delivered 80.”
Since 1992, when the first 476 km high-speed rail line entered service, Spain’s network has expanded dramatically. Today, it spans 3,973.7 km - making it the second longest in the world, behind China.
To restore public confidence and pride in its railways, Spain must shift from patchwork fixes and reactive maintenance toward forward-looking investment. That means not only modernising aging infrastructure, but also building with resilience in mind - anticipating the growing threats of extreme weather and natural disasters.
Moreover, Spain’s high-speed rail network remains overly Madrid-centric. Travel times between other major cities suffer as a result. For instance, the journey from Valencia to Barcelona - roughly half the distance of Madrid to Barcelona - takes 30 to 40 minutes longer. It takes seven hours to travel from Barcelona to Bilbao by train. This madridependencia does not help the dynamism of the Spanish economy.
“There can be no doubt that that the AVEs along with an extensive motorway network, have shrunk the country in terms of journey times and joined up the nation for the first time,” wrote Michael Reid in Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country. “They symbolise much that is good about Modern Spain.”
I’ve been able to hop on an AVE in Madrid and hop off in spectacular cities like Málaga, Seville, Valencia, or Barcelona in less than three hours - a reminder that, despite the recent chaos, Spain’s trains are something to be proud of.
Until next time amigos,
Brendan
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