Madrid-to-Galicia high-speed AVE to open by Christmas: Tickets on sale for €15

IF YOU missed your chance to get an early 'Black Friday' cut-price rail ticket for travel in 2022, you can still get one from today (Tuesday, November 23) – although this time, only for trips between Madrid and the far north-eastern region of Galicia.

That's because the high-speed AVE network has now added another route, which is set to open on December 21.

Highly-efficient, typically about double the price of the Long Distance (Larga Distancia) 'snail rail', although about a third to a quarter of the journey time, the AVE is still thin on the ground in Spain, limited to the largest cities and mainly via Madrid; where it is in operation, though, the service is of a similar level of comfort and facilities as major cross-border rail connections such as the EuroStar.

As an idea of how quickly it gets passengers from A to B, the Valencia-Madrid AVE covers the journey in just 90 minutes, compared with about three to four hours by motorway or six hours by Larga Distancia including changing trains halfway.

The brand-new Madrid-to-Galicia AVE service runs to Ourense, the only one of the region's four provincial capitals without a coast, but from here, other rail links run regularly to the other capitals of Lugo, A Coruña and Pontevedra and to key cities such as Santiago de Compostela, Ferrol and Vigo.

According to transport minister Raquel Sánchez, who took the first 'test trip' in the soon-to-be-launched AVE link, the journey from Madrid to Ourense takes two hours and 15 minutes.

Tickets bought over the next two weeks are valid for travel on the new connection any time from its opening date of December 21, through to September 12, 2022.

A quarter of a million tickets costing just €15 one-way are now up for grabs, from the website for rail board RENFE, by telephone, or from physical ticket offices in stations.