AVE Madrid–Barcelona

Scheduled at 300 km/h, this line flipped one of the world’s busiest air routes to rail.

The AVE crosses the empty heart of Aragón in a straight, confident line: wind farms, ochre mesas and the Ebro at Zaragoza, where the Pilar basilica’s towers slide past the window. Liberalisation brought Ouigo in 2021 and iryo in 2022, and the three-way fare war has turned a once-premium dash into everyday transport. Non-stop services stitch Spain’s two great rivals together in two and a half hours, door to door through city-centre stations the airlines cannot match.

Stations

1. 0 kmPuerta de Atocha
2. 221 kmCalatayud
3. 307 kmZaragoza-Delicias
4. 446 kmLleida-Pirineus
5. 527 kmCamp de Tarragona
6. 627 kmBarcelona - Sants

The stations OpenStreetMap lists for this service, in order, with the distance along the line as drawn here. A train may skip some of them.

Along the way

• Guadalajara’s red plains
• Zaragoza’s Basílica del Pilar
• Aragonese steppe wind farms
• Camp de Tarragona vineyards
• Barcelona Sants beneath the Eixample

How this line was checked

• Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 309363 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 25 m of them
• Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 7 m from it
• The operator publishes this line's timetable: Renfe — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
• Wikipedia has an article for this line
• See for yourself: open this line on the map with OpenStreetMap's own railway drawn underneath it

Questions and answers

How long is the AVE?

The AVE runs 621 km from Madrid to Barcelona.

How long does the AVE take?

The fastest scheduled journey is 2 h 30 min for the 621 km. That is an average of 248 km/h end to end. The line's top service speed is 300 km/h.

Who runs the AVE?

Renfe, with S-103 Velaro E.

How old is the AVE?

The line has been in service since 2008. That is the year the atlas dates it from: for a modern brand running over an older railway, it is the railway's date, not the brand's.

How often does the AVE run?

2–3× hourly; ~35 daily each way across three operators.

View on the world railway map →

Read more on Wikipedia ↗