Route options; Fly into Madrid or Malaga to go to Seville? Can't fly direct to Seville

You’ll find Malaga to Seville has Renfe high-speed trains taking as little as 2 hours at less cost and in less time than the high-speed trains from Madrid to Seville. So, flying into Malaga on a direct flight is what I would choose.
After Seville, take an Iryo train or a Renfe AVE train from Seville’s Santa Justa station to Madrid’s Atocha station. These take about 2.75 hours.
Finally, from Madrid Atocha station take an Iryo, Renfe or Ouigo Espana train to Barcelona Sants station.
www.TheTrainline.com lists schedules and sells tickets for all high-speed train companies in Spain.
Iryo train tickets are for sale now through December 14 at www.Iryo.eu.

www.Renfe.com has tickets for Renfe high-speed
trains.

Is there a direct flight to Malaga? Even if you have to change planes, I would choose the itinerary that eliminates the need for an extra flight within your trip. It is not too onerous to start in Madrid, head to Sevilla, then come back through Madrid to head to Barcelona by train.
Train from Malaga or Madrid to Sevilla take about about the same amount of time, but if you start with Sevilla, you can easily zip to Madrid and then Barcelona by train.

Depends somewhat where you're coming from, but in general, for long-haul international flights, you will find a heckuvalot more options flying to Madrid than you will to Malaga. That would tend to make Madrid more appealing to me.

When crossing an ocean, I prefer to avoid additional connections once I land in Europe if I can. Neither Sevilla nor Malaga have a lot of long-haul international flights (though they have some). If the few options to either don't work well for you, I'd choose Madrid as my arrival point, then take the train to Sevilla.

I’d take Malaga any day over Madrid airport to get to Seville. I flew into Madrid two weeks ago. It’s a huge airport with multiple terminals. If you arrive into terminal 4, you’re set. The train station to Atocha is downstairs. If you arrive into terminal 4S (satellite) it’s a tram ride and a very long walk. Arriving into terminal 1, 2 or 3 you will have to take a bus to terminal 4. It isn't well marked and only runs like every 20 minutes. Thank goodness for kindness of strangers assuring me I was at the right bus stop for the terminal bus. Baggage also took forever to arrive off the flight. After waiting what seemed forever, they changed the baggage carousel to another one announcing it over a loud speaker in Spanish only but not the reader board. I followed the herd and it did arrive but it was frustrating.
Three days ago, I flew into Malaga from Marrakech. Easy peasy. Manageable, well signed airport. Really quick immigrations. Bag was waiting when I got to the carousel. Well marked train to downtown right out the front door with employees helping tourist figure out the ticket machines. They are geared for the tourist crowd. Maybe a 15 minute ride to Malaga María Zambrano train station from where you can catch the train to Seville (2 hours). The other option from Malaga is taking the bus to Seville which runs direct about every hour (2 hours 45 minutes) for less than half the cost of the high speed trains. I just did that today for twenty bucks. Alsa, the bus line runs really nice motorcoaches. Very comfortable..
Anyway, my experiences with the two airports were night and day. I would also say Atocha is a very big and confusing train station. You’ll arrive from the airport into the local trains side of the station and have to make your way to the high speed section. It’s just not fun coming off an international flight with jet lag. I like simple. Cheers.

Depending on the scheduled (and actual) arrival time of your flight, the relative infrequency of rail connections between Malaga and Seville could be a reason to favor flying into Madrid. Of course, frequent departures aren't of any use if all the trains are full and you're planning to buy the train ticket after landing; full trains are not rare in Spain.

Madrid Atocha to Seville: roughly hourly departures.

Malaga Maria Zambrano to Seville: 7:10 AM, 9:17 AM, 1:21 PM (this train takes nearly 3 hours rather than just 2 hours), 2:25 PM--plus some later trains.

That's more than a 4-hour gap between the last morning train and the first afternoon train out of Malaga.

Thank you for all the replies. Sounds like both options have pros and cons and we will look into flight and train timetables to review and decide. Thanks again!

I think people make this too complicated. I've done this several times. If you fly into Madrid, you can take the metro to the train station (not far) and then take the train down to Seville. .It was easy, fast and comfortable.