Renfe will inaugurate tomorrow, Friday, July 27, the AVE route that will connect Madrid with Marseille. This will be the second line with which the Spanish railway company operates alone abroad, following the launch of tickets for the Barcelona-Lyon route.
Both lines are part of an expansion plan in the French railway market, in which the Spanish public operator has begun to introduce itself this year with the intention of continuing to integrate and expand its coverage until reaching the French capital next summer. The connection between Barcelona and Paris will allow you to reach the French city in time for the celebration of the Olympic Games in it.
Raül Blanco, president of Renfe, spoke a few weeks ago about the strategy of the railway company in the neighboring country, and concluded that Renfe joins the French market with “vocation of permanence” and that the operator intends to “be a reference” in the transport sector in France.
Solo operations after the break with SNCF
The tickets for this new AVE line went on sale on June 21, along with those of the Barcelona-Lyon connection, with two launch prices: 19 euros to travel from Montpellier or Narbonne to Barcelona, Zaragoza or Madrid, and another, of 29 euros, for the complete route, the connection from Marseille and Lyon with Spain.
In a first phase, the connections with France will be 16 per week, and only during the week; A figure that will increase to 28 in September, when the service will also be offered on weekends. From October, almost 10,000 weekly places will be offered.
Renfe also intends to operate other cross-border lines that would link Catalonia (Barcelona, Girona and Figueras) with the French region of Occitania (Perpignan with extension to the city of Toulouse and intermediate stop in Carcassonne). On the western side, it plans to connect San Sebastian with Hendaye and Bayonne, creating routes between the Basque Country and the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Until the end of 2022, Renfe operated with Elipsos, a joint venture with the French public railway SNCF, the three high-speed lines between the two countries: Barcelona-Paris, Barcelona-Lyon and Madrid-Marseille. SNCF decided, unilaterally, to break up the joint venture; left the Barcelona-Lyon and Madrid-Marseille corridors, claiming their lack of profitability, and began providing the service between Barcelona and Paris alone from December 11, 2022.
After these movements, and once the appropriate permits and accreditations have been obtained from the French authorities, in addition to staff training, Renfe begins to operate its AVE in a country more restrictive than Spain for foreign operators.
To develop the company’s international business through access to new markets and manage those projects outside Spain that Renfe already has in the implementation phase, the company Renfe Proyectos Internacionales has recently been constituted.
