by Chris Read

Only two months late - not bad for Spain! The new high speed AVE rail service between Madrid and Barcelona will open to passengers on 20th February, the day before the electoral campaign officially starts for the national poll on 9th March, and two months after the originally-planned inauguration date, 21st December last year. The Development Minister, Magdalena Álvarez, gave the news after a meeting in Barcelona on Tuesday with the President of the Generalitat de Cataluña, José Montilla.

Tickets will be available to by from the 14th Feb via the Renfe website, with further details and pricing coming out soon.

The first AVE high speed pulled up into Barcelona’s Sants station last Friday morning as part of testing on the new line. It was an eight-wagon Siemens S-103, the train which will be in service on the route.

Tags: Ave, Madrid - Barcelona, sants, spanish train, station, Travel, weekend trip

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.