Madrid-Barcelona: three decades of an AVE that no politician could inaugurate

• Transportes Jaque from the low cost train to the airlift: "It will remain only for connecting passengers"

It is 6:00 am at the Madrid

station on February 20, 2008. It is cold that cuts the body.

bids farewell to the first AVE travelers to Barcelona from the platform

:

pray.

The socialist president had announced that the high-speed train that would link the capital of Barcelona with Madrid would open on December 21, 2007, but the delays in the works to enter Barcelona forced the schedule to be rescheduled and removed the pageantry that this line had They did manage to launch other AVE sections,

with smiling politicians in the first class seats.

In the wagons that morning, according to the chronicles of fifteen years ago, 157 passengers.

Food service in the seat.EFE

Identical scene, but in the dock of the

station , in Barcelona.

Take a seat on the first AVE, the one at 6 in the morning, a boy in uniform, barely 13 years old, Gonzalo Rubio, who had to arrive on time for his class at the El Pardo school in Madrid.

A short distance away, Nil Benavente, a baby barely seven months old who is making his first train trip to spend the day with his parents in Madrid.

Gonzalo arrived on time for class: at 8:35 a.m., the first AVE on the Barcelona-Madrid line arrived at the Atocha station.

Since then, during those 15 years of life.

Some 140 million passengers have used this Renfe connection.

The first year, that 2008, some 5.7 million travelers did it.

During this time, Renfe presumes, if these 140 million travelers had made the journey by car, they would have emitted 4,705,573 tons of CO2, or what is the same, all the CO2 that 47,055,732 holm oaks are capable of absorbing throughout 40 years old.

Maybe more.

If those 140 million had opted for the great rival of the AVE, the

that connects the two cities.

Since the irruption of the high-speed line between Madrid and Barcelona, ​​Iberia, Air Europa, Vueling or the defunct Spanair, the airlines that operated the same route, have lost one in four customers on that route.

A stewardess distributes the free press among the AVE.EFE travelers

Today the plane has the lowest quota in its history between Madrid and Barcelona, ​​35%. But it is not only the airlines that suffer, Renfe itself does as well.

And it is that for months, in addition to the AVE, low-cost high-speed trains have been operating.

There is the Renfe one,

;

that of the French operator SNCF,

, and now also

, of the Ilsa group.

Renfe maintains the leadership, with a share of 57% in the AVE in the third quarter of 2022;

Ouigo reaches 29% and Avlo signs 14%, according to the records of the National Competition Market Commission (CNMC).

No data on Iryo yet.

We go back to 15 years ago.

On board that first AVE between the Madrid capital and the Catalan capital, preferential passengers had access to the daily press, breakfast or lunch (depending on the schedule) on site.

In the cafeteria,

, the same as a half-liter bottle of water.

In that cafeteria, the chronicles of the first day collect, there was a 28-year-old young man, Borja, who for work reasons came to pay 400 euros for a ticket on the air bridge and that the day before the AVE premiered he obtained a ticket for 120 .40.

The first AVE arrived from Barcelona reflected in a sign at the Atocha station.EFE

There is some nervousness inside the train.

And it is that the start of that AVE has been the least controversial.

The Ministry of Development of

had launched a few months earlier, in October, an intense advertising campaign to sell the premiere of the line.

He marked December 21, 2007 in red on the calendar.

So did the President of the Government himself, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

And the order was given to speed up the works to arrive on time.

On

But on October 26, 2007, just a few days after setting the date for the first AVE, the displacement of one of the tunnel walls of the FGC Llobregat-Noya line at the point where the high-speed line crosses it underground , obliges to indefinitely cut the movement of all trains.

, the Long Distance trains only have to reach Tarragona, and some 100,000 passengers have to be relocated, free between the metro and buses.

The delay caused forced the suspension of the planned inauguration of the AVE.

The PSOE lost an important electoral trick, but the fiasco was not like sticking out its chest and there was no time left.

On February 20, just a few days before the start of the electoral campaign, Gonzalo Rubio and Nil Benavente took the train.

No politicians.

Only electoral posters on the platform.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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• Barcelona

• Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

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