High-speed route
AVE
Madrid → Seville · Spain
AVE in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 471 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h 20 min
- Average speed
- 202 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- Renfe
- Train
- S-100 (Alstom)
- Countries
- Spain
- In service since
- 1992
- Runs
- roughly hourly
- Riders per year
- ≈ 3M
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Spain’s first AVE, built for Expo ’92 in standard gauge, the line that reset Spanish railways.
Spain’s high-speed age began here in April 1992, when a brand-new standard-gauge line opened for Seville’s Expo: bypassing the single-track Despeñaperros pass that had throttled Andalusian trains for a century. The S-100 sets, French TGV cousins built in Spain, drop out of Madrid across La Mancha, thread the Sierra Morena in a chain of tunnels near Brazatortas, then run down the Guadalquivir valley with a stop beneath Córdoba’s old town. Renfe still honours its founding promise on the route: more than five minutes late and the fare comes back.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1254828 — 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
- Atocha’s tropical palm house
- La Mancha plains
- Sierra Morena tunnels
- Córdoba — stop for the Mezquita
- Guadalquivir valley orange groves
- Santa Justa arrival
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More train routes in Spain.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Madrid → Seville · Seville → Madrid.