Slow service, delays, and maintenance work on the high-speed rail line between Barcelona and Madrid have forced the train companies operating the service—Renfe, Iryo, and Ouigo—to adjust their schedules. Specifically, the rail operators have agreed with Adif, the company responsible for managing and maintaining the infrastructure, to establish new timetables starting this Thursday, February 5, and extend the journey time between Barcelona and Madrid by approximately 25 minutes, according to sources at the Ministry of Labor. As an alternative that is growing in demand these days, Iberia has decided to cap economy class fares on flights from Barcelona to Madrid at 99 euros until February 19. On the high-speed rail network, as explained this Monday, the last trains running each day on this corridor will be eliminated, as they were arriving within the maintenance window during which Adif is dedicated to inspecting and repairing the infrastructure, the source of the current problems.

Problems are piling up on the high-speed rail line between Madrid and Barcelona. Adif, the infrastructure manager, which has been working for days to correct all the defects in the train network, has asked all operators serving this line to cancel the last trains of the day to allow more time for on-site work. In practical terms, this means that starting this Monday, there will be no high-speed service between Barcelona and Madrid after 8:00 p.m. This situation will only affect this corridor, and the Ministry of Transport has not yet specified how long it will last. Renfe, Iryo, and Ouigo have already canceled the last trains of the day because, with all the speed limits that had been established for safetyHigh-speed train journeys are so long that the last trains of the day occupy part of the nighttime maintenance slot. While there is no commercial service, workers thoroughly inspect and repair the infrastructure, and sources at Adif (Spain's railway infrastructure manager) indicate that there is not enough time to carry out the "adequate" checks. Renfe, which operates the AVE high-speed train service, has explained that it is canceling the journeys that departed from Madrid (Atocha station) at 8:27 p.m. and 9:07 p.m. and arrived at Sants station at midnight. Trains departing from Barcelona (Sants) at 9:05 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. and arriving at Atocha station shortly before midnight have also been canceled. "Automatic rebookings have been made for passengers affected by these cancellations," the company explained.

High-speed rail continues to add more routes. Ouigo was the operator that inaugurated liberalization in Spain, launching the route between Barcelona and Madrid in mid-2021. Four years later, the numbers speak for themselves, with a drop in ticket prices and an unprecedented increase in ridership, filling stations to capacity. With the corridor between the two capitals beginning to show signs of wear, the French company, a subsidiary of the SNCF group, will launch a new connection that will allow passengers to reach Seville without changing trains.

Until a few years ago, there was no doubt. When you wanted to take a high-speed train, it was always an AVE (High Speed Train). All you had to do was fight with the Renfe website to get the tickets you wanted, after refreshing a page that easily crashed a thousand times. However, not much was done because, at that time, traveling between Barcelona and Madrid by AVE was too expensive. Despite it being a short and comfortable journey, people often ended up choosing to travel by plane, unless the company paid.

In just one month, high-speed rail users between Barcelona and Madrid are clear: the elimination of Renfe's AVLO trains has skyrocketed prices. This has been seen by those traveling from one city to another, but also by those who took advantage of the railway operator's low-cost option to reach the Catalan capital from Tarragona, at a better price compared to the AVE.

Trains are experiencing a golden age, with record-breaking years in a row and stations packed to the rafters. Everything accelerated after the pandemic, coinciding with the liberalization of high-speed trains that began in May 2021 with the arrival of the French operator Ouigo to cover the Barcelona-Madrid route, a corridor that had only been served by Renfe's AVE (High Speed Trains) for more than ten years. A month later, Renfe's low-cost option, AVLO, came into operation, and in 2022, it was the turn of the Italian company Iryo, which over the years extended competition to the rest of Spain's corridors. This competition has driven down ticket prices, while boosting ridership and leading to more incidents on routes that were not usually problematic.