State rail operator Renfe announced on 8 October that it will offer more than 1.12 million seats between 9 and 12 October to cope with holiday traffic around Spain’s National Day and the Pilar long weekend. Roughly 403,000 seats correspond to commercial high-speed and long-distance services (AVE, Avlo, Alvia, Euromed, Intercity and AVE Internacional), while 720,000 seats cover subsidised Media Distancia and Avant routes. Key corridors benefiting from the uplift include Madrid-Sevilla (40,300 seats), Madrid-Cádiz (9,300) and the northwest axis, which tops 114,000 seats. Friday 9 October will be the busiest day, with over 120,500 high-speed seats. For corporate travel planners, the extra capacity should alleviate concerns about seat scarcity during one of Spain’s peak domestic mobility periods. However, Renfe warns that an ongoing minor baggage-system strike at Madrid-Barajas and upcoming driver strikes at competitor Ouigo (see separate story) could still disrupt multimodal itineraries. Renfe is simultaneously onboarding 680 new customer-service agents and launching a unified ticket-sales platform on 28 October—steps that should improve booking flexibility ahead of the full Entry/Exit System rollout next spring. Businesses with large domestic project teams should secure seats early; Renfe reports that some AVE trains were already 75 % full within hours of the announcement.
Source: Renfe Press Office
