High-speed route
AVE
Madrid → Málaga · Spain
AVE in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 513 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h 20 min
- Average speed
- 220 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- Renfe · iryo
- Train
- S-102 Talgo 350
- Countries
- Spain
- In service since
- 2007
- Runs
- ≈ 10× daily across operators
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Splits from the Seville line at Córdoba and dives through the Sierra to the Costa del Sol.
The 2007 extension beyond Córdoba turned Málaga from a sleeper-train destination into a lunch trip: 513 km in about two and a half hours behind the shark-nosed S-102 Talgos. The route shares the classic run across La Mancha and down to Córdoba, then swings south through the olive seas of Andalusia, tunnelling the cordillera around Antequera, its Santa Ana station a hub in the groves, before sliding into María Zambrano beside the old town. El Torcal’s karst towers and the reservoirs of the Guadalhorce pass just out of window-reach.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1374172 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 7 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.1 km from the shape of IR 17191
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Córdoba interchange
- Olive groves to the horizon
- Antequera Santa Ana
- Guadalhorce reservoir country
- Málaga María Zambrano
More high-speed routes
- Eurostar
Drops 75 m below the sea through the 50.5 km Channel Tunnel, 37.9 km of it under the seabed, the longest undersea stretch of any rail tunnel.
Wikipedia ↗ - TGV inOui
France’s original 1981 LGV forms the first leg; today the TGV holds 320 km/h nearly all the way to the Mediterranean.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Scheduled at 310 km/h, Europe’s fastest timetable, this line flipped one of the world’s busiest air routes to rail.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Spain’s first AVE, built for Expo ’92 in standard gauge, the line that reset Spanish railways.
Wikipedia ↗
More train routes in Spain.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Madrid → Málaga · Málaga → Madrid.