Lugo from Madrid or Barcelona?

There's good rail service from Madrid. Service isn't very frequent, but there's a morning train that takes just over 4 hours.

Barcelona would be a lot tougher; the fastest route would probably be through Madrid.

You can check schedules on the Renfe website: https://www.renfe.com/es/en.

There's money to be saved by buying tickets ahead of time, but do check cancellation/change policies.

The fast trains make few stops, and I don't happen to have been to any of the stops between Madrid and Lugo. Zamora and Ourense are among the possibilities. Between Barcelona and Madrid, Zaragoza is highly recommendable. It can be extremely hot in the summer, though.

If you've got days, rather than hours, to spare, you could pick your way across northern Spain from Barcelona to Lugo without dipping down to Madrid. I went to and enjoyed all of these places in 2016: San Sebastian, Bilbao, Vittoria-Gasteiz, Burgos, Leon and Oviedo--plus some side trips to smaller places.

We took the train from Madrid’s Chamartín station to Lugo. In Lugo we stayed at Hotel Monumento Pazo de Orbán e Sangro for two nights. It was a nice hotel just inside the Roman wall. A taxi from the train station to it was €5. The town is small with few tourists. The wall was nice to walk along and goes the entire way around the town.

As we were on a schedule on that trip and knew exactly when and where we’d be, we did buy the train tickets in advance. I don’t recall which towns we passed by.

Wow! Great information! Thank you sooo much. This is the first time I have used this forum. It is now going to be my go-to for info.

There are a few photos of Lugo from that trip on my website, if you want any idea of the town.
The first Lugo photo is a night photo and the last is the mail box Lugo photo.