Buying high speed train tickets

Hi Camille, While the Senior discount card--the Tarjeta Dorada card-- does give 20%-40% discounts on the regular full
price fares , you can get up to a 60% discount if you buy non-changeable tickets online in advance when they are released by Spain's National Train company, Renfe at www.Renfe.com. The train website "The Man in Seat 61" recommends www.TheTrainline.com when the Renfe website is difficult to use. The Trainline website charges a 5% service fee. The high-speed AVE discounted train tickets are first released 90 days in advance of the date of travel. Other
train tix are released 60. days in advance of the date of travel. The main AVE trains travelers use run from Madrid to Barcelona and vice versa, Madrid to Granada and vice versa, and between Madrid, Cordoba and Seville and the reverse. There are other routes as well. What cities are you planning to visit? And when are you going to Spain?

The drawback to purchasing discount tickets in advance is that you are locked into a schedule since the discount tickets are not changeable. We prefer the card since it provides the flexibility to go at anytime at only a small lost of discount.

This is our itinerary: Sevilla - Granada; Granada - Madrid; Madrid- Bilbao.

Going in mid-October.

You will need to go to www.TheTrainline website enter your dates of travel for Seville to Granada and see what is available. If you’re confident that you will not be changing your dates of travel and If you want a high-speed train that gets there in 2.5 hours, then I would suggest buying those tickets online as soon as possible. The Trainline website charges 5% above what Renfe charges, but it’s easier to use and it’s quick.
On a arbitrary date I looked at beyond mid-October, Renfe has just one fast train departing at about 9am arriving in Granada at 11:43am and that train is likely to sell out by the time you arrive in Spain. Otherwise, you could be stuck paying the same price for a train taking 6 hours.
A bus taking 3 hours only costs $30.
For Granada to Madrid, the full price ticket runs more than $100. You can still get a ticket on an fast “Alsa”train doing the trip in 5.5 hours for $53 on some later October dates. But there are very few tickets left.
Finally, for Madrid to Bilbao a quick look at 10/29 shows there is one ticket on a fast morning train taking 4.5 hours for $39. The remaining morning trains take almost 7 hours and
begin at $64.
You can wait until you get to Spain and buy a senior discount card but, from what I can see, you likely will end up paying more for tickets on trains that take longer.
Best of luck to you.
Have a great time in Spain!

‘Mid-October’ rings a little alarm in my head. October 12 is a national holiday. Spaniards often “bridge” a holiday to the nearest weekend and take the extra time to travel. With the 12th being a Wednesday this year, the whole week+ could be a little busy for travel—I’d definitely want tickets around those times secured in advance.

And why go to Train line? The Renfe website is perfectly fine and if there are any specify discounts for traveling on certain days you'll get it there.

Just yesterday I bought two high-speed train tickets for the same day, Barcelona to Girona. I got the weekend-visiting travel fare that didn't show up elsewhere, and chose to buy at the window at the Sants station. It was the same price.

Edit: I see where Renfe can get difficult because they ask for either you passport number or national ID card number due to the terrorist bomb attack on a train several years ago. That can get confusing.

I vote for trainline.com as well after attempting to buy high-speed train tickets from Madrid to Barcelona. Maybe if you used Renfe a lot you can figure it out but as first timers I gave up halfway thru. Was able to buy 2 tickets on trainline in a few minutes, could pick seats in the quiet car facing the direction of travel ( which I never got to on Renfe), the price was in U.S.dollars and they had emailed the confirmation and tickets right away. I'll use the site next year in Scotland.

I also switched to Trainline after encountering difficulties with Renfe. I'm glad that I did because after I finished booking I found that our ticket prices had increased by €10 a few minutes later.

EDIT: Trainline also required passport identification for booking just like Renfe. The problem was that the Renfe English booking page is not properly translated. I had to cut and paste into Google Translate to try to figure out what Renfe was requesting. And there were significant portions of the Renfe page which could not be cut nor copied. I could not fill out what I could not understand.

I always try to save every Euro that I can, but Renfe was just not worth it for me. BTW, the Torre Oro express fare from BCN to VAL only resulted in a €1.75 or 3% service charge by Trainline. And Trainline did not charge me any service fee at all for the ALVO fare from VAL to MAD. YMMV.

And I am over 60. I figured that early booking saved me much more than any senior discount after arrival in Spain. And the ALVO fast train fare was so cheap that it would not bother me if I had to cancel the non-refundable ticket and rebook. I even paid the extra €10 for an over-sized bag in the off chance that one of our carry-on bulges too much and exceeds the bag size limit (which would result in a €30 penalty at the station; The bag penalty would have been equal to the total cost of the two ALVO tickets).

Exactly. If you can snag a $40 discount train ticket online in a few minutes, by the time you navigate a difficult-to-use site ( as the Man in Seat 61 refers to Renfe) and hit “buy”, the ticket might already be sold to someone else. And if you wait until you arrive in Spain, all the fast trains could be sold out.
Flexibility or a deep discount is the choice. You usually can’t have both.

....And if you wait until you arrive in Spain, all the fast trains could be sold out..... The probability of that happening is very, very slim. In all of our travels we have never encountered a sold out train. Just too many seats on a train and trains are very frequently. That would be the least of my worries.

Frank- Spanish trains absolutely do regularly sell out. Right now, on a Monday morning, three of five high-speed trains from Madrid to Granada on Friday are already sold out. One the the available trains only has first class seating remaining.

Glad I saw this post, I hadn't considered that it would be necessary to book tickets this far in advance. I just snagged my tickets for Granada to Madrid on the 24th of October. I purchased on Renfe using their app, which I found less confusing than the website.

I was actually going to book it using thetrainline.com, but for some reason, they were showing the train leaving at 13:18 and getting into Madrid at 18:15 (4 hours and 57 minutes). Renfe had the same train getting in at 16:55 (3 hours 37 minutes). I gather this is due to the connection in Antequera. Looks like I snagged the last ticket as that route is not showing now on Renfe. The only ticket left was in the E. Confort section, so I didn't get to pick a seat, but I'd prefer other shorter trip I guess.

It is interesting that some train connections that are available directly through Renfe don't necessarily seem to be available on thetrainline.com, perhaps due to the limited number of seats available.

Looks like I'm in a bit of a spot. I've got a hotel room in Toledo on Tuesday, 10/18 - unfortunately, no trains available, and while I can get an Alsa bus out on the 18th to Toledo, they have no availability apparently for returns on the 19th. Any suggestions anyone?

@Moe -- I believe the trains from Madrid to Toledo are not posted yet for October. I have been watching for tickets for the previous week in October since mid-summer and they have never been available (though I have been able to purchase train tickets on the AVE trains). So it's not that they are sold out -- it's that they are not available yet for purchase online. I would not worry about alternate plans yet as I'm sure they will post soon.

@ebennet12, thank you for that quick reply - I was about to have a panic attack trying to figure out how to get there and back. I still have to book Madrid to Seville and Seville to Granada.

I'm getting pretty fired up, 32 days to go!

Thanks everyone for advice about booking train tickets. I didn’t use the Renfe website as it was a little confusing.
I used Petrabax,. It was pretty easy to use and they didn’t charge a booking fee.