Barcelona welcomed its first 220mph bullet train from Madrid yesterday. It arrived eight minutes early. Well, actually, it arrived six months late because of delays in the construction of the final couple of kilometres at the Barcelona end. Six months of works that have been recorded gleefully by Madrid based media outlets who took great delight in showing suffering Barcelona commuters whose local trains were severely disrupted during this period and also pointing out that the capital’s end of the project was completed on time.
The journey equates to approx 320 miles, which is roughly the distance from London to Newcastle. The AVE train covers this distance in 2 hours 45 minutes.
Most Madrilenos would have preferred an AVE line to Valencia, which is considered as the ‘Playa de Madrid’ (Madrid’s Beach) and where many own a holiday apartment or chalet. No right-thinking Madrileno intentionally goes to Barcelona unless it’s for work or an unavoidable family occasion – christening, wedding, funeral etc. Instead, they prefer to sniffily ignore it and regard the Catalunyan city as a terrible mistake wrought on Spain by a cruel and unfeeling God. The feeling is, apparently, mutual.
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