Safe to buy bus & train tickets upon arrival in Spain?

Diana, I traveled all over Spain during summer 2016 without buying any tickets in advance. Because of my itinerary, I was mostly on local trains and buses. The local trains don't have seat reservations (unlike AVEs and, I think, ALVIAs and AVANTs), so you can always buy a ticket, then you look for a seat like everyone else. The main issue is that you must allow time at the train station to buy the ticket, either from a human being or a vending machine. Madrid's large station (Atocha) is a challenge for buying tickets in a hurry.

Now, if you're traveling around a holiday, things can get a lot busier. Is yours a spring-break trip?

In looking at schedules online, to answer questions on this forum, I have seen occasional AVEs marked "train full" for the current day or perhaps the following day, so sell outs can happen. If you watch your schedules as you get close to the point of buying tickets and see trains for your date selling out, that would be a concern.

The bigger issue, for me, is what can happen to the fares on those trains as you get very close to your departure date. It's not as painful as it is in England, but there's quite a price penalty in many cases for waiting to buy tickets on the fast trains. The Tarjeta Dorada will probably not fully make up that difference. if you end up on some fast trains. I'd suggest looking at the current prices for your travel dates (if they are solid) vs. the prices for today/tomorrow to be sure that you either are not going to want to take the fast trains or that the Tarjeta Dorada will save you enough to keep the price reasonable. If you have one or two potentially expensive AVE trips coming up and the dates/times are rock-solid, you might consider buying those tickets now (or when they go on sale), without the T.D. discount. (I'm assuming you have to enter the T.D. number at the time of purchase, but I don't remember for sure.)

I saw some price variation on bus tickets, too, but I'm not sure what was behind it. It could be any of these explanations or possibly a combination of two or more:

• Upward price creep as the travel date approaches (as on trains)
• Higher prices from the beginning for popular departure times (e.g., commuting runs)
• Higher prices for special deluxe buses (this definitely happens; the price difference isn't worth it unless you have a preference for that departure time)

Occasionally buses sell out. And there can be lines at bus-station counters, so don't show up 10 or 15 minutes for the bus and count on catching it. In addition, there seems to be a policy to stop selling tickets X minutes before the bus is due to leave. ALSA and perhaps some other companies have vending machines in a lot of bus stations. I found them easy to use. (Except the day the computer network was down; that was not fun.) The ALSA machines, at least, allow you to print out schedules, which I found a great convenience. It's best not to expect the ticket seller to speak English.

As a general rule of thumb: one pre-books on long-distance trains and high-speed trains (AVE, Alvia...) and buy on the spot for buses, regional trains and commuter trains. AVEs DO get often full on certain lines.

As per where... travel agencies are not really the place to go for booking internal transportation... you should book directly in the transport company website, for example, for trains RENFE (or if visiting Catalonia, also FGC.cat, as there are two train companies here). Note that there's no prebooking on many short commuting-type itineraries, you purchase on-the-spot, that means there'll be several sorties each day.

As per Tarjeta Dorada, note it's not always the cheapest option... for long-distance trains (including high-speed trains) RENFE launches offers all the time in its website and you're sometimes better off with these than using the card. Note that card gives you a % discount on "regular fares" not "offers", thus, the offer might be lower than the regular minus the discount.

My advice:

1.) Make a list of your itineraries (A to B, B to C, etc)
2.) Check which discounts offers you the Tarjeta Dorada -it varies depending on the distance/type of train.
3.) Check the regular cost on RENFE's site and apply the discount to come with a final figure for each itinerary
4.) Search the site for "offers" and see if any applies to any of your itineraries... and compare with 3.)

Enjoy!

Short answer -- absolutely ! We use the discount card every year. Works great.