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Seat reservations on Renfe

Posted by on

Sorry to bother you all again!
My son and I are travelling to Spain in a few weeks. Since my son will be going to France afterward, he already bought his Eurail Pass. I will buy my train tickets on Renfe and www.loco2.com. The Renfe Pass is more expensive comparing to the price of the total ticket fees that I'll buy (Barcelona-Valencia-Madrid-Granada-Barcelona). My questions are:

Would it be possible for me to book my seats on AVE trains to be seated together with my son? If not, we'll just make sure that we'll be on the same trains:)

I'm a bit worried because the schedule for the AVE train from Granada to Barcelona is not available yet on the Renfe site past May 18th. I thought that it's usually opened 60 days ahead of time.

Thank you for all your help! I've received your answers to my last questions. They had helped me a lot in planning this trip.

Posted by
16893 posts

I think it would require a live agent to seat you together with one ticket and one passholder reservation, either in a train station or if booking by phone with Rail Europe (but hold times can be quite long). Renfe and Loco2 don't sell passholder reservations online. Rail Europe sells both online, but seats are assigned by the computer.

Posted by
126 posts

I read on https://www.seat61.com/Spain-trains.htm that when trains open up isn't exact. I put in dates for September which I knew wouldn't be posted yet, but a message came up on the Loco2 site that allowed me to sign up for an alert as to when the seats will open. Maybe you can do that? Good luck

Posted by
16893 posts

Also, if you buy the Eurail Spain Pass (different from the Renfe Spain Pass) for 4 travel days in a month at $222, then you can make both seat reservations at the same time, either in the same shopping cart with your pass or at a station in Spain.

Posted by
5581 posts

I have looked at the RS map with estimated costs for particular legs of train travel a few times now. They have always been higher than the actual cost. For example, we purchased day of tickets from the Madrid airport to Sevilla and the rate was about 70euro. If you buy ahead of time you'll save money on that. The RS map shows a much higher rate.

I have looked at a Eurail pass a few times and they just don't seem to be as economical as purchasing individual tickets.

Posted by
16893 posts

Actually, our ticket map shows the Seville-Madrid fare as $85, which is a pretty dead-on translation of Renfe's "flexible" AVE fare of €76.30, with the euro equal to $1.12 today. Some of the discounted promo fares can be available on short notice, or they can sell out well in advance.

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