TRAIN fares everywhere in Spain except Barcelona are set to go up on Tuesday by an average of nearly 11 per cent, according to the national rail board, RENFE.

Short-haul and local fares will be mostly affected, although the costs of tickets for long-distance journeys are expected to remain untouched.

Examples of these will include the price of a single or return ticket along the Gandia-Valencia line, which will go up by 11.7 per cent, or 9.4 per cent for multi-trip or season tickets.

Train tickets between Madrid and destinations in Andalucía, Cantabria, the Comunidad Valenciana, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura and the Basque Country will rise by 12.85 per cent, or multi-trip tickets by 5.74 per cent.

Long-distance high-speed AVE tickets will not increase in price, although the RENFE has not ruled this out for the future.

This increase, which is six times the rate of inflation – currently at two per cent – is said to be the highest in Spain's history.

Local train tickets – for the so-called Cercanías lines, such as those between Valencia and Xàtiva or Gandia – increased by between three and six per cent in the four-year period between 2007 and 2011.