Renfe train tickets

www.TheTrainline.com shows only one train each day departing from Madrid at 1:40pm and arriving in Santiago de Compostela at 10:22pm. There are tickets available for April 3, 4, 6 and 8 and 9. No tickets showing for April 5 or April 7.
That may be because April 5 falls on a Friday and it is the Friday following Easter.
You may need to adjust your itinerary and leave on April 4 or 6. There are only 10 tickets remaining for April 6.
Best of luck!

If you look on RENFE for earlier dates, not on 3rd party websites there are 7 trains per day- 3 direct and 4 with one change at Ourense. The journey time should be about 4 hours so it is not obvious why the trainline trip is so long- except that the switch of trains is at Palencia- totally the wrong direction of travel.
Probably tickets have not been released, so trainline is sending you on the only convoluted route it can find.

This 'only 10 tickets left' is a way to force you into a quick sale. It is NOT fact.

If you look at today you find out how Trainline over charge you- the 1430 direct train on RENFE is 113 Euro, on Trainline it is £144.70 (£ should be £96 at today's exchange rate).

Trainline says only 2 seats left at that price. There are at least 9 on RENFE's own website.

ALSA bus also run the route in 9 hours, so much the same as the daft trainline route for as little as 18 Euro that day.

The bigger picture is that Renfe decides when tickets on any particular route will be put on sale. And, despite stating that it puts its High-speed train tix up for sale 90 days in advance of the train’s departure date, there are dates just three weeks from now for which Renfe still has not released tickets. Renfe is controlling the release dates and sets the prices for its own tickets. Wherever Renfe has no competition or very little competition, the prices are 200 percent to 300 percent higher than they are on routes where IRYO and Ouigo Espana are competing with Renfe for market share.
This is why Renfe is charging €100 and up for the fastest trains on this Madrid to Santiago de Compostela route running at times of peak demand. For the route between Madrid and Barcelona where it has a lot of competition, Renfe has to keep its prices much, much lower—even as low as €15 in some cases.
Let me share a personal experience with Renfe’s unpredictable ticket release times and “dynamic pricing” I had last September. The final high-speed train ticket needed for a trip to Spain was from Madrid to San Sebastián. Renfe has a single morning high-speed train doing this route and on most dates I checked, there were non-refundable, non-exchangeable tickets available for about €20. But Renfe has no competition on this route and did not put its train tickets on sale 90 days in advance per its stated policy. Even 30 days in advance—the tickets were not for sale and I was beginning to think that single morning high-speed train might sell out before I could book the tickets. I began checking every day and evening to see if Renfe had put the tickets up for sale.
Then, 23 days before the train’s departure date Renfe finally put the nonrefundable, unexchangeable tickets up for sale on its website for about €64 or US $70.
With all our hotels already booked, and not seeing any alternative, I bought the last two train tickets we needed for the month-long trip for $140 from Renfe.
The very next day Renfe had the same ticket category on the same train for sale on its website for €19.

I am having the same issue, trying to book a train from Bilbao to Segovia May 1. Everything is "sold out" for days on either side of that date (on Renfe and Trainline, etc), and I am sure that just isn't possible. So, I am checking every few days, but also coming up with a Plan B (car rental to Segovia, drop in Madrid) and a Plan C (fly to Madrid, then train). Just in case. And honestly, car rental might be cheaper in the long run by the time I get 2 tickets for Bilbao-Segovia, and then Segovia-Madrid....

I am also waiting on Renfe tickets for various routes in May. There’s no rhyme or reason to when they go on sale. For my May 2 travel date - no tickets yet. For my May 24 - I got tickets. May 18? No tickets yet.

Thanks everyone! Great feedback and info

I got all excited for a minute because I went on Renfe's site and instead of error messages or "sold out" trains on my Bilbao-Segovia route, I got a "You are in the queue" message with a 17 minute wait time and 4000 people ahead of me (seriously). And when it was my turn...got an error message. Sigh.

@ TheOrdinaryRebecca, You gotta just admire RENFE’S marketing strategy of stating trains are “Sold Out” on its website for weeks on end while actually holding back the sale of the very same train tickets until there’s less than 30 days before it departs from the train station. It gives foreign travelers high anxiety and (as I well know) puts them in a place where they will pay just about anything to make the torment end.
To see you were informed there are 4,000 other customers in line ahead of you kinda makes the case that Renfe is not so much running a national train company as it is an Auction House.
I hope that you get your tix very soon!

Kenko, the 4000 people in line message just cracked me up. But it is very frustrating, for sure. I just figure I'll check every few days and see what turns up.

This is in reply to others posting about Renfe's ticket sales.

In addition to the Renfe website, I've seen Rail Ninja, Omio, and Trainline as options to book rail travel in Spain. Is there any advantage of using anything other than Renfe?

My understanding is that Trainline and Omio are easier to use and accept most credit cards. Renfe has a reputation of difficulty with credit card transactions, not to mention...indifferent English translations lol. Many people seem to think the ease of using Trainline or similar is worth the small transaction fee they charge.

I've seen very serious warnings about Rail Ninja on this very forum. Do not use it!

I've seen Omio pop up on Google searches but know nothing about it.

As far as I know. The Trainline is legit; it's just that it may charge extra for tickets, has a service charge, and might not show you all the options you'd see on the website of the company running the trains. I don't tend to buy many train tickets before I leave home, but I have been able to get tickets from Renfe, the Norwegian railways, and the Swiss railways before departing for a trip. I've also used the website or app of the train company to buy tickets for England, Scotland, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Finland after arriving in Europe.

I really like to know what all my options are, and I don't like to pay more than I need to. However, if my itinerary was locked down enough that I was comfortable buying train tickets really early, could see great bargains fares were available, and couldn't get the rail-company website to accept my credit card, it would be sensible to buy the deeply discounted tickets from The Trainline or another not-crooked seller.

@sandysartain and others - just booked my tickets for Bilbao-Segovia, so Renfe has uploaded some stuff finally! I tried to book via Renfe but got hung up on the checkout page because they did not have the +1 country code for my phone number, of all things. Despite my being able to select it on the previous page, and of course it was required and of course there was not a way to manually enter it. So I used Trainline, not that much more $, infinitely easier.

Hooray!
Now you can look forward to having a great time in Spain.

I am having similar issues to the ones noted here for Jun 28 from Toledo - Barcelona (Renee website errors and train line showing all AVE trains from Madrid-Barca that day are sold out) .

Thank you for all the information in this thread - I'm going to keep checking daily.

I also want to report that while I am glad I booked ahead - none of the trains were completely full. Even for the train from Toledo to Madrid (a busy tourist route), people were buying tickets at the station, no problems. I am sure it is route and time-of-year dependent, but that was my experience in late April-early May if that helps alleviate anyone's anxiety...