“Our dogs are family. They are not an extra suitcase, they are an essential part of the trip. Europe is already ahead of us by allowing dogs of all sizes on trains. Why can’t Renfe be just as modern and empathetic?”
With these words and the support of more than 5,000 signatories, Isa Díaz Yusta, who promotes a petition on Change.org, summarizes the feelings of Renfe travelers in the north of the country as stated The New Spain. And the train company does not allow the access of dogs weighing more than 10 kg on the routes that go to Galicia, Asturias or the Basque Country.
That impossibility has open a wound in northern Spain. The aforementioned request is not the only one. With almost 5,000 supports, another user of the same platform also has a petition open for Renfe to allow dogs weighing more than 10 kg to travel on these routes.
“We can’t always drive or leave them with someone. Many of us need the train to go see family or for work, and leaving our colleagues behind is not an option,” says the promoter on this occasion.
Arancha Gómez, again another Change.org user, asks that the possibility of carrying accompanying dogs be expanded on all lines operated by Renfe. It is the same thing that Laura Serena asks for, whose request has already been collected more than 26,000 signatures.
I don’t have a driving license, so I depend entirely on public transportation. And, although I have been waiting for a change for years, Renfe only allows traveling with dogs weighing more than 10 kg on four routes. FOUR!!. The rest of the country remains inaccessible for those of us who travel with large dogs.
Not without my dog
Indeed, as noted in the last petition, Renfe only allows traveling with dogs weighing more than 10 kg on limited routes. Since the petition was launched, Renfe has been expanding the destinations in which you can travel accompanied by large dogs but, for now, the only AVE available are still the following:
- Madrid-Barcelona
- Madrid-Zaragoza
- Madrid-Alicante
- Madrid-Valencia
- Madrid-Seville
- Madrid-Málaga
- Madrid-Granada
However, the company The possibility of traveling with dogs is not enabled between 10 and 40 kg on all high-speed and long-distance lines. On the contrary, dogs of this size and any other can ride on Cercanías trains.
If we want to travel with a dog weighing less than 10 kg, Renfe allows us to do so on all AVE, long-distance, AVLO, medium-distance and metric gauge trains. Except in the latter, the pet can travel in a carrier that does not exceed 60x35x35 cm for a surcharge. On those trains that have places specifically reserved for dogs to travel, you can pay 35 euros so that the pet does not travel in the carrier.
However, as we say, only on selected routes you can travel with dogs weighing more than 10 kg. In this case, it is mandatory to fill out a document discharging the company’s responsibilities and another to confirm that we are aware of the regulations. The dog will travel in the adjacent seat and this cannot be chosen because there are pre-established places for this purpose.
Furthermore, in these cases, the company provides a travel kit and has a series of standards and recommendations that are summarized in this document. In the delivered kit there is a seat cover and a mat to place on the window seat.
The dog must be on a leash of a maximum of 1.5 meters and with a muzzle. In all cases, only one pet is allowed per traveler, but in the particular case of dogs weighing more than 10 kg, no more than two pets are allowed per car on the same train. Furthermore, on the Madrid-Málaga and Madrid-Granada corridors, only one pet of this size is allowed per train.
Asturian users, as we have seen, complain about this type of restrictions for a line that It opened in 2023 after 20 years of work (13 years late) and a investment of 4,000 million euros.
Even on lines that do allow it, some travelers also complain that the purchasing process can be too complicated. They explain in the blog Pipperontour that not all trains on the enabled lines allow traveling with dogs and, furthermore, this possibility only appears to be added in the last step of the purchase process, which makes it difficult to get a ticket.
To try to make everything clearer, Renfe has a space where all frequencies can be consulted that allow large dogs but the aforementioned blog states that this list is not always updated.
To all of the above we must add that it is no coincidence that some of the popular petitions requested through the Change.org platform come from northern Spain. In one of them it is remembered that Gijón is one of the cities in our country with the most registered dogs and Asturias is the Autonomous Community with the most dogs per inhabitant of our country.
Photo | john crozier and Phil Richards
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