Companies in Spain are reducing their use of high-speed rail between Barcelona and Madrid, replacing some trips with online meetings, flights or road travel, according to an account of the deterioration of the AVE service. The shift affects a route that had become routine for business travel and linked major economic centres.
Javier Cottet, president of Cottet Óptica, said he had used the AVE intensively for years to visit his seven stores in Madrid and return to Barcelona the same day. He has now stopped. Cottet attributed the change to repeated delays, incidents and a longer journey time, saying that once the trip takes more than two and a half hours, a same-day return no longer pays off and travellers cannot be sure of arriving on time. He tries to replace trips with virtual meetings when possible, though he said some journeys are unavoidable, and he travels to Madrid less than he would if the network worked better.
High-speed rail had made travel between Madrid and Barcelona, Seville and Málaga a habit for many companies and brought Spain's main economic centres closer. The crisis of the AVE now threatens that way of working. The Urda tragedy, as the account calls it, has magnified a mobility crisis that was already taking a toll before the accident and is expected to mark a turning point for infrastructure.
The deterioration began in 2025 and intensified after the Adamuz accident in January, according to the account. Since then, high-speed rail has lost passengers while aviation has gained them after years of declining share. The Barcelona-Madrid air shuttle carried 4.2% more passengers in the first nine months of the year, and flights between Madrid and Seville and Málaga grew by more than 20%.
A founder of one of Barcelona's large technology companies said that before the crisis 90% of trips were made by AVE and 10% by plane; now the split is 50-50. Another multinational in the sector based in Madrid said it had cancelled a corporate high-speed trip planned for this week and would use flights instead.
Airlines have responded to the higher demand. Vueling permanently restored the Barcelona-Madrid route in October and added more than 2,800 seats to its Barcelona-Seville and Barcelona-Málaga connections. Iberia and Air Europa have increased capacity from Madrid to southern Spain, while Ryanair and Volotea have begun operating these routes for the first time, initially on an exceptional basis to cover transport needs arising from the Urda accident.
The account cautions that aviation is unlikely to absorb all the passengers displaced by the rail crisis, whether in seats or on price. Some travellers are returning to the car. Ignasi Pietx, president of Comertia and general director of Artyplan, a Catalan company with an office in Madrid, said the AVE had lost reliability and that he no longer trusted it as before. He said train users must leave more time in case of delays, that the plane is not always an alternative, and that he has sometimes travelled to Madrid by road.
The situation has taken a new turn with the possibility of suspending the Barcelona-Madrid corridor for a few months from next year to carry out maintenance work, as Minister Óscar Puente said at his appearance on Friday. The idea has caused both astonishment and concern in the business community, according to several sources consulted.
Ignasi Sayol, president of Pimec Logística and an infrastructure expert, said his organisation has detected companies choosing the plane or other means of transport, prioritising videoconferences or grouping meetings to reduce train travel. He said this shows a loss of confidence in a service that is strategic for business competitiveness.
Research cited in the account estimates that the Barcelona-Madrid corridor raised economic activity by 2.4% and productivity by 1.1% in the provinces where it stops, measured as average effects compared with a scenario without the connection. The most favoured sectors included knowledge-intensive activities, services and tourism, according to a UAB study, while the impact on manufacturing was more modest.
The CNMC estimates that travellers saved €431.3 million in 2024 alone because of lower ticket prices after liberalisation. The account does not separate business users from leisure travellers, but it illustrates the economic scale of a system that allows more travel at lower cost and is now at risk.
Sayol said companies need efficient and reliable rail connections to operate normally. Lluís Moreno, vice-president of Foment and president of the Cambra de Contractistes d'Obres de Catalunya, argued that money cannot be spared on maintaining transport infrastructure. The account notes that investment in high-speed rail has not kept pace with passenger growth, and that confidence in the service has been broken; restoring it will require more than putting trains back into operation.
Sources: La Vanguardia.