Spain

Getting around by public transport

Long distance transport in Spain is by air, train or coach depending on your budget and the journey you want to undertake.

Train travel

can be a comfortable, cheap and occasionally quick way to get from one place to another. In spite of the fact that almost all trains are run by the state-owned RENFE company, the system is insanely and unecessarily complex. Here are a few points to bear in mind:

• Rail passes are a complete waste of time. Prices for ordinary tickets are pretty cheap - less than 50 euros to get a sleeper train from one end of the country to the other, and supplements for using rail-passes are so high (over 20 euros for the same journey), that the saving will almost never cover the cost of the pass. If you are using a pass such as Eurail, consider saving the days for more expensive countries. If you are using a period pass such as Inter-rail, consider visiting Spain before or after the period of validity. If you are considering getting a EuroDomino or Iberia pass, don't.
• In spite of being a single company, RENFE effectively operates as two completely separate divisions; Grandes Lineas RENFE and Regionales. Grandes Lineas RENFE runs all the long-distance high speed trains, and Regionale provides short distance and Cercanias (local and commuter) trains. These companies have a totally separate fare structure and attitude to rail passes and bookings. All Grandes Lineas (and Alta Velocidad) trains must be booked in advance, often at least a day before travel, and you will incur supplements using rail passes on these routes. Regionale services cannot be booked in advance, and it is easy to buy a ticket from a machine and travel immediately. They also do not charge supplements for rail passes. It is useful to know the difference as both run on a number of routes, for example from Madrid to Valencia - here the Grand Lineas trains take 3 hours and run several times a day, but cost twice as much as the much more interesting 5 hour journey by Regionale.
• Use the right counter at the station. Regionale counters cannot provide information or sell tickets for Grand Lineas trains. Grand Lineas counters will only provide information on Regionale trains where they are needed to complete a long-distance journey, and if they do decide to give you information otherwise it is quite likely to be inaccurate. Each type of counter also has a sales window and an information window. You cannot get information at the sales windows. NOT EVEN PRICE INFORMATION. They will just send you to the information window. Go to the information window first and get all the prices for all the options, get them to print out all the options, and then take the printouts to the sales counter to make sure you are sold the right thing. It is impossible to emphasize enough how much easier your life at a station will be if you follow this procedure, otherwise you will be thrown into a Kafka-esque nightmare of being passed from line to line, and desk to desk without any idea of what you have done wrong.
• Catch night trains. There are probably more routes running at night than during the day anyway, and the sleeper supplements are pretty cheap compared to the cost of a night of accomodation.
• Use the journey planner on the RENFE website. If there isn't a direct train for the journey you are undertaking, look at flights or buses. The website defines anything less than an hour as being a tight connection, and because prices are related to distance travelled roundabout routes can be pretty uncompetitive.

Air Travel

. If you want to travel from one side of Spain to the other, air travel offers a quick and relatively comfortable way to cover the distance. If you are travelling outside the peak season, or are able to book the journey well in advance, it can also be a fairly cheap way to travel. The two key operators to check out are Vueling, a budget airline which operates mainly out of Barcelona and Valencia flying to other destinations in Spain and various European capitals, and Iberia, which is the Spanish national airline and runs a number of bargain flights within the country.

Coach Travel

. Long-distance buses are more widely used in Spain than in much of Western Europe. This is principally because they fill the enormous gaps in the national train network, and even where trains do run, they are often able to compete on both price and speed. There does not however appear to be a simple central location to get information about travelling by coach. Most of the operators are smallish local companies or regional alliances, and information is pretty much only available once you arrive in Spain. That said, a journey planner which covers a large number of routes in Northern Spain is available through the website of ALSA, which appears to be an alliance of operators in the area. In comparison to the railways, getting information and buying tickets for coaches once you are at the station you want to depart from seems to be almost unbelieveably simple - there is usually just one counter where they will do everything. That said, they are even less likely to speak English than the staff at train stations, so be ready to struggle by with phrases such as "solo ida" (single) and "ida y vuelta" (return).

Ferries and hydrofoils

run by Transmediterranea regularly link Barcelona and Valencia on the Spanish mainland to the Balearic Islands.