Renfe Archives - usatoday24

If you thought that Renfe was taking… Germany is spending 100,000 million euros so that its trains arrive on time

June 11, 2026 by usatoday24

We complain a lot about Renfe (and a good part of those complaints, with reason). But although it may seem otherwise, Germany has been neglecting its railway network for decades at decadent levels. And just as they count According to the Financial Times, only six in ten long-distance trains arrive on time. However, the country already has a plan in mind, a plan that involves investing some 100,000 million euros in solving its punctuality problem. The problem. In 2000, 84% of German long-distance trains arrived on time. Today that figure has fallen to 60%. Already last year, an analysis The Financial Times placed Deutsche Bahn, the German public operator, below even the most late railway operators in the United Kingdom. Just like account The German Transport Minister, Patrick Schnieder, even warned in March that the situation threatened to erode public confidence in the institutions. In his own words, he assured that if the State is not capable of guaranteeing basic services, “democracy is harmed.” How we got here. According to the media, this deterioration has been the result of a series of poorly made decisions over two decades. In the early 2000s, the German government considered taking Deutsche Bahn public. The plan never materialized, but to improve the balance sheet for that hypothetical exit, network maintenance was cut. To this was added that between 2005 and 2010 the budget for railway infrastructure was, adjusted for inflation, 20% lower than in the mid-nineties, according to calculations from the FT itself. The icing on the cake came in 2009, when Germany constitutionalized the so-called “debt brake“, which forced the State to balance the accounts every year. This caused investment spending to systematically lose the battle against social spending. The current state of the network. Just like account According to the FT, 16% of the assets of the German railway network are classified as deficient or directly inadequate. There are bridges dating back to the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II and signal boxes installed in the 1960s that are still in service. In fact, according to DB InfraGo, the Deutsche Bahn division in charge of maintaining the network, 80% of all delays are directly caused by deterioration of the infrastructure. You have to open the tap. In 2025, Chancellor Friedrich Merz took advantage of a constitutional loophole to create a fund of 500 billion euros to renew the country’s infrastructure over the next twelve years. The railway is one of its top priorities since, of that total, Deutsche Bahn has committed 107 billion euros until 2029. However, Philipp Nagl, CEO of DB InfraGo, recognize to the FT that needs at least 130,000 million to cover the accumulated delay. And as he comments, every year, more assets reach the end of their useful life. How it is being executed. The strategy is being extremely drastic, closing entire sections of the network for months to rebuild them from scratch, instead of patching section by section. Furthermore, it is an atypical way of doing things at Deutsche Bahn, which historically had a tradition of keeping lines open while carrying out construction work. “With that method it would take forever,” explains Nagl to the FT. The number of active works on the network has grown by a third since 2024, to exceed 28,000 in 2026. The immediate consequence is more chaos in the short term. And the punctuality goal has been lowered to 70% and postponed until 2029. A real example. In one of the busiest corridors in the country, the one that connects Cologne with the Ruhr Valley, along which up to 280 trains circulate daily, the line has been closed since February. According to account In the middle, the 55,000 regular travelers must resort to more than 200 replacement buses, many of them stuck in traffic jams. In return, 81 kilometers of track, 50 detours and 12 stations are being renewed in five months. The person in charge of the project, Arno Jaeger, defined the medium as “a monumental task” with a budget of 800 million euros. To speed up the work, specialized heavy machinery is used. In fact, one of the machines, colloquially nicknamed Mamut, renews two kilometers of track per shift, four times faster than if they did it through the conventional method. It’s about operators. Beyond Deutsche Bahn, there are private competitors waiting for their chance. And just as account FT, FlixTrain, the railway arm of the Flix group, has reserved 2.4 billion euros to buy up to 65 high-speed trains that it wants to deploy from 2028. The Italian high-speed operator Italo has also announced its intention to enter Germany with an investment of up to 3.6 billion if it gains access to the network for several years. Both point to 2028 as a key year. Cover image | Deutsche Bahn In Xataka | The Spanish west has a forgotten train that it wants to recover. The problem: neither Madrid nor Europe are interested

A Renfe train was left without air conditioning at 40ºC. 1,056 days later, an affected person has just collected her money

June 9, 2026 by usatoday24

How much would you fight for the refund of 31.90 euros? Macarena LE, a resident of a town in Teruel, is clear: three years, if necessary. And that is how long it has been behind Renfe for it to refund the price of a ticket between Zaragoza and Barcelona. The reason? The car’s air conditioning. Evident, due to the non-existent air conditioning of the car. What has happened? A Renfe user named Macarena LE, a member of Facua, has gotten the money back for a train ticket she took three years ago. The company had promised that it would do so with each and every one of the people who took that train, but the money never appeared in the user’s bank account. a little odyssey. Despite telling them that they would return the money to the passengers, the amount never arrived so after a few weeks, the affected person filed a claim, they explain in Facua. With no news about it after three months, he decided to put himself in the hands of the legal service of the consumer defense association. Once reaching this point, the association filed a new claim. To this complaint, Renfe responded that it gave the order to return the money but it still did not arrive. After another four months, Facua files a new complaint and Renfe assures him that it has tried to refund the money but that the procedure has been rejected on two occasions. At that moment, Renfe instructs Macarena LE to receive the money through a payment platform. This method also being impossible and the months accumulating, Facua sends a third claim to Renfe in which they simply ask it to deposit the money into the bank account of the affected person, attaching the document that proves its ownership. Three years after taking that train, the associate has ended up receiving her 31.90 euros. A trip… complicated. And, once seated, they assure in Facua that the conductor informed the passengers that the air conditioning was broken and that their travel money would be refunded in compensation for the inconvenience caused. But the journey between Zaragoza and Barcelona had an added problem: July 18 with departure at 3:52 p.m. and arrival at 5:20 p.m. That day maximum temperatures of 44 degrees were reported. Obviously, the heat must have been oppressive inside and the affected person claims that they had to drink water constantly to get through the trip in the best possible way. The expected quality. Due to the numerous claims filed by Facua, and beyond the fact that the money was not returned until three years later, Renfe never fought not to return the money. Instead they admitted that they would send the money back for “not having offered the service with the quality levels” expected. However, the fulfillment of the procedure itself does not seem to have had the expected quality either. And Facua pointed out to Renfe that they were failing to comply with article 21.3 of the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of November 16according to which: “Employers must respond to the claims received in the shortest possible time and, in any case, within a maximum period of one month from the presentation of the claim.”. When Facua presented this second claim in which this regulatory text was recalled, Renfe had not given a response or paid the corresponding money for four months. What if it happens to me? That Renfe has returned the money to a passenger sets a precedent but does not automatically lead the company to return the money in the event of an air conditioning breakdown. In its rules, Renfe states that the traveler has the right to receive compensation for the cancellation of the trip, for its interruption, for a lack or deficiency in the service provided on board or for delay, but it makes it clear that such compensation will not be carried out if: The reason is an extraordinary circumstance unrelated to railway operation, such as extreme weather events (a storm that leaves a train without heating in winter, for example) or natural disasters. Nor if the breakdown or problem was caused by the behavior of the traveler. Nor if it is the damage caused by a third party outside the railway company that causes the incident (people on the track, copper theft, sabotage… etc.) That is to say, the mere absence of air conditioning does not automatically imply that the passenger’s money will be returned. What has happened will have to be taken into account to decide whether the company is obliged to act in this way. Photo | Nelson Silva In Xataka | The Madrid Cercanías have become a nest of problems and delays: their solution is new “megatrains”

Renfe has a contract of 4,000 million euros in its hands. And no Spanish company gives you the trains you are looking for

June 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Renfe is preparing to choose the lucky company that will supply at least 30 high-speed trains. It is the most expensive tender in the company’s history, with around 4,000 million euros at stake. It is also the litmus test to see if Spain once again positions itself as a leading country in high speed. The contract. 1,362 million euros insured and the possibility of reaching 1,777 million euros. That’s only with the purchase. Because if we take into account the cost of maintenance, a long-term contract is estimated at 4,000 million euros. This is the contest to which anyone can apply. As long as, of course, it is capable of delivering 30 high-speed trains and is open to the delivery of another ten units if the Spanish company so requests. It is one of the previous steps to launch a Madrid-Barcelona line in less than two hours. A comprehensive renewal of the line thanks to a Spanish invention and new trains capable of reaching top speeds of 350 km/h are essential. Quickie. In substance and form. Because in order to comply with the specifications of the Renfe contract it is essential that the trains can run at a maximum of 350 km/h as we say. Inside they will have to accommodate 450 passengers, have a space for transporting bicycles and a cafeteria car. But in addition, Renfe wants the chosen company to deliver at least five units in the first 40 months once the contract is signed. At the latest, the last unit of the fleet of 30 trains will have to be delivered before month 78. That is, the company will have to have everything ready in less than six and a half years and after three years Renfe has to begin to reap the first fruits. “Citizens would not understand”. That is the warning that José Ignacio Jainaga, president of Talgo, has issued in statements collected by The Mail. And the obligations included in the contract specifications leave this Spanish company in a very complicated position according to experts. In fact, Jainaga wanted to highlight the efficiency of its trains, which it considers are capable of offering an efficiency “35%” higher than rivals, but it has not talked about deadlines or being able to reach the aforementioned 350 km/h with its trains. Despite this, he considers that citizens “would not understand that the regulator, the operator, and ultimately the Government, do not consider Talgo’s solutions as the best adapted to the priorities of Spanish society.” CAF, another company specialized in the construction of trains, would also be outside the conditions required by the contract right now, they explain in The Basque Journal. The company has the approval for its trains to run at 300 km/h in Spain since 2020 (the most advanced reach 320 km/h top speed) but with such tight deadlines, CAF would be left out because it would not be able to develop a new platform in time. Without a trace of Spain. Both CAF and Talgo understand that with these conditions they will not be able to compete in a contest that is considered one of the most attractive in Europe. At the moment, it does not seem that either company can offer such fast trains within the planned times. CAF, as we say, does not have a platform capable of reaching this speed. Talgo, on the contrary, managed to reach 360 km/h with their Talgo Avril but they are limited in their approval to reach a maximum of 330 km/h. But, in addition, the relationship between Talgo and Renfe is not going through the best moment. The Avrils arrived with reliability problems that hit the ceiling with the fissures in Madrid-Barcelona. Renfe considers that, since they are under warranty, Talgo must fix them but this company says that the problem is generated by the infrastructure. In addition, Renfe sanctioned Talgo with more than 100 million for being late in delivering these trains. A punishment that Ignacio Jainaga, president of Talgo, claims to have been resolved although no further details have been given, stated in The Confidential. Beyond Spain. In the midst of these controversies, Óscar Puente, Minister of Transportation, did not hesitate to show interest in trains that are manufactured far from our borders. It makes sense because, according to the experts referenced in the previous media, only Hitachi or Siemens seem really well positioned to be able to compete for this project. Before the bidding rules were announced, Puente toured the factories of these companies. He appeared, for example, at the Siemens factory whose Velaro Novo Yes, it can operate at more than 350 km/h. Hitachi has the ETR 1000 that Trenitalia uses for Iryo and that reach a top speed of 400 km/h. But, also, Puente also traveled to China where he praised the CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles trains because they are capable of reaching the aforementioned 350 km/h but, above all, he praised their ability to deliver them in record time and at a much more competitive price. He came to point out that: “Chinese manufacturers deliver trains at half the price in a period of six months to two years, while the European industry offers them to you for 60 months. I am the politician who buys and I don’t have 60 months” However, this possibility has been put into more doubt because the European Commission is investigating this company because it considers that the Chinese State has doped it financially, which could leave it out of Renfe’s famous 4 billion euro contract. Photo | MaedaAkihiko In Xataka | “They deliver trains in six months at half the price”: Renfe needs new AVE and is clear that China will give them to them

In the battle for high speed in Italy, someone has passed Renfe on the right. Someone called France

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

SNCF will compete for the Italian high speed network from September 2027. For a few weeks now, the French company has had the go-ahead to operate on the Italian network and stand up to the state company Trenitalia and the private company Italo. With this movement, France once again gets ahead of Renfe. Although it’s not all bad news. What do we know? The SCNF company, the public railway entity in France, will compete for high speed on Italian soil from September 2027. At least, those are the deadlines according to their latest announcement which specifies that the corridors they can use have already been assigned. In his statementSCNF explains that its trains will offer up to 13 round-trip services on the Turin – Naples and Turin – Venice corridors. The company boasts that this new activity on the lines will result in the creation of 4,000 jobs with the addition of direct and indirect workers. What does it offer? With its proposal, the French company ensures that the Italian railways 15 TGV M trains will be available. They are Alstom trains that the company has not yet been able to test because deliveries have been delayed in recent months. They hope to have them in operation first in France starting next July on the Paris-Lyon-Marseille line. The trains have had to be modified slightly since much of the Italian high speed It does not allow driving at more than 200 km/h. The company will offer four round trips on the Turin-Venice and nine on the Turin-Naples. This last corridor is key because it passes through cities like Milan, Florence and Rome, which is undoubtedly a very juicy cake for a company that intends to gain volume in the coming years. A tough battle. SCNF’s landing comes after a battle in the courts. They explain in the French media that Italy has tried to torpedo the company’s attempts to compete with Trenitalia and Italo. According to these media, the Italian subsidiary of the company has been in an open battle since 2021 with Italian Railway Rete (RFI) that manages the Italian roads, would be the Italian Adif. After numerous disagreements, the Italian subsidiary of the French company ended up denouncing RFI to AGCM, the body in charge of ensuring free competition in the transalpine country. Finally, this body has given the approval so that SCNF can compete with local companies on its roads. To compete, the French company will once again bet on offering lower prices and they assure that the medium-term objective is to gain 15% market share. In the French mediain fact, Spain is pointed out as the example model that SCNF wants to implement in the Italian country, trying to maximize trips on already consolidated routes. And Renfe? Renfe also has its own plans in Italy and although it has not been officially confirmed that it wants to make the leap to high speed, the truth is that the Spanish company has been taking positions that give us an idea of the extent to which it wants to offer this service. And it is that Renfe bought 33% of Arenaways in 2024an Italian company that provides railway services. Of the rest of the shareholders, the Spanish Serena Industrial Partners It also has 33% so most of it is Spanish. This purchase has allowed Renfe to operate the Cuneo-Saluzzo-Savigliano regional line from 2025 and will do the same with the Ceva-Ormea line when the works are completed. But, furthermore, in Expansion They already pointed out then that the company has certifications to operate throughout the Italian network, which should facilitate the arrival of Renfe to the high-speed corridors. Spain-France-Italy. The triangle formed by Spain, Italy and France is leaving us with an intense battle for European high-speed services. In our country, the roads have been opened to Ouigo (SCNF) and Iryo (Trenitalia) and the battle has even reached the use of workshops. In Italy there has been an attempt to torpedo the entry of SCNF but after four years of fighting, the French company has ended up receiving the go-ahead to take its trains to compete on the Italian expressways. Renfe, at the moment, has not confirmed plans to take this step and only operates on regional trains. In France, Renfe has complained that the neighboring country is creating innumerable obstacles to reaching Paris, a key objective when it comes to offering a profitable high-speed service to the north of the Pyrenees. Trenitalia, however, Yes, it has managed to operate in France connecting Paris with its large local cities. Leisurely. All in all, it must be taken into account that Renfe’s forays abroad are not reaping bad results as far as its accounts are concerned. Last year he managed to invoice 20 million euros with the AVE of Meccawhere it moved 10 million passengers, like main promoter of Renfe International Projects. There, Renfe has high-speed services running but its projects outside our borders They are varied. It operates, for example, on the regional train network of the Czech Republic and on Rail Baltica (Latvia and Estonia) and It is also part of what is known as the Mayan Train. Photo | Fernando Meloni and Phil Richards In Xataka | There is a fight between the railway operators to get the best drivers and Renfe is winning it

Rodalies is such a chaos of delays and cancellations that one student has had enough. And he is already demanding 9,200 euros from Renfe

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

What price do you put on your time? Airline and railway companies are clear: time is worth the same as the train ticket. With more or less flexibility When it comes to refunding a ticket, these companies are very clear and the law protects them. But what price do you put on your time when that delay directly affects your work or your daily life? David Pujol, a second-year Mathematics student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), is also very clear about it. In your case, 9,211.35 euros. And he is already claiming that money from Renfe. Psychological damage and a change of residence Psychological problems that have aggravated his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), academic damage and a forced change of residence. This is what, according to the Catalan student David Pujol, has caused the malfunction of Rodalies, the Cercanías service of Catalonia. It includes everything in the document that has been presented against the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Territory as a claim to recover the 9,200 euros in which it values the 55 serious incidents that have been documented between September 2024 and May 2026, they explain in The Country. These serious incidents refer to train cancellations without prior notice and the absence of real-time information to be able to take an alternative route. “I have lost entire days of my life”the young man pointed out this same week in Cope where it affected the problems generated by delays. Among their complaints is the inability to organize their day correctly given the countless problems at Rodalies. Recognize elDiario.es that his house in Pineda de Mar is far from the faculty by public transport but that the journey, which was supposed to take two hours, was rarely less than two and a half hours and, on occasions, could last up to four hours. Click on the image to go to the original tweet “I got up at four in the morning to get to class and, many times, I didn’t even get there,” the digital media stressed. The only solution he found was to move to Cerdanyola del Vallès where he paid for the apartment with one of the scholarships awarded for education. These continued delays and cancellations, he explains, have had direct effects on his studies and mental health. That is why he claims 9,211.35 euros which breaks down as follows: 211.35 euros for the reimbursement of transport passes 4,500 euros for the worsening of his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) 2,500 euros for violation of the right to education 2,000 euros for the forced move Although this time he has taken the step of claiming these more than 9,000 euros as full compensation for all the damage caused, Pujol has been filing complaints with the Rodalies service for some time, with 33 complaints in physical format and nine in digital format, another three complaints to the Síndic de Greuges (Catalan Ombudsman) and another to the Labor Inspection for non-compliance with minimum services during a day of strike. Click on the image to go to the original tweet But also, he has been making his work public for some time. In the image above you can see that in the first three months of 2025 alone it had already filed 15 formal complaints about cancellations or delays. With each one of them, the young student accompanied the information with a post in X. The result: in the summer he got a meeting with two senior officials from the Government and Renfe. In The Newspaper already noted that most of these problems that Pujol referred to had their origin in the use of lines R7 and R1two of the lines with the most problems in the entire Catalan network. In fact, just two days after the top post on X, Rodalies registered severe problems on lines R4, R3, R7, R8 and R15. It is just one of the cases that exemplify the poor functioning of the Catalan network. This same week, The Vanguard collected a multitude of testimonies from train users in Catalonia in which some claimed to leave home up to an hour early “just in case” to arrive at their workplace on time. Among the voices in the report there was a general solution: switch to the bus. This means of transport is also saturated but, several users say, it is more reliable than trains. “I had been waiting at the station for two hours and I had seen how the first three trains of the morning had been cancelled, without anyone giving us any explanations,” Pujol told elDiario.es a few days ago. He was then talking about a specific day in March 2025. Today, in May 2026, there are WhatsApp groups with more than a thousand users who send alert messages when a Rodalies train fails again, as they assure The Vanguardthe information from the company is null. Photo | eldelinux and David Pujol In Xataka | Renfe has launched a real-time map to know where your surroundings are in 2025. And it works quite well

Renfe trusted in Justice to prevent Iryo from using its workshops. Your last hope just faded away

May 20, 2026 by usatoday24

Renfe will have to open its workshops to Iryo. At least for now. This is what the National Court has decided, rejecting the very precautionary measures requested by Renfe with which it intended to close the Italian company’s access to its space. Of course, the judicial procedure continues, so it is not at all clear what will end up happening in the medium term. No. This is what the National Court has determined. It does not accept the very precautionary measures requested by Renfe to prevent Iryo from using its facilities to carry out its own heavy maintenance activities at its facilities, they point out in The Economist. The National Court sides with the CNMC, at least for now, in the battle that Renfe maintains against Iryo and the regulators. However, the procedure continues and Justice will have to confirm whether, in the future, Renfe must keep its facilities open to rivals. The CNMC. This first decision of the court reaffirms the position of the CNMC, which claims to be allowing all the protagonists of this film to operate under equal conditions. Cani Fernández, president of the CNMC, defended the position of the regulators, arguing that “the CNMC has to guarantee access to the market under equal conditions,” in words reported by He Northern Castile. Since the conflict beganthe CNMC has sided with Iryo and demands that Renfe open its workshops so that the Italian company can carry out maintenance work on its trains. They point out that if Iryo has to send its trains to Italy, it would lose them for weeks and put it at a disadvantage in the market. The other alternative, that scheduled maintenance is not carried out, is not logically viable either. What Renfe says. For its part, Renfe believes that give access to Iryo to carry out the activities that have already been advanced to them has no place within the competitive framework that the Spanish company and the rest of its rivals had given themselves. Renfe does not avoid its obligation to have to lend its facilities to Iryo and Ouigo but remember that this is only the case for light maintenance tasks. However, they allege, Iryo has requested to be able to carry out its own heavy maintenance activities. This, according to Renfe, would have direct consequences on its offer because its facilities are already working at full capacity. The company assures that if it gives entry to the Italian company will suffer the following consequences: Remove 1.2 million seats from its offer due to not being able to maintain its own trains Of those seats, one million would correspond to the offer offered as a public service Loss of 60 million euros in income What Iryo says. In its allegations, Renfe points out that Iryo’s activities would occupy 10% of the La Sagra facilities, where its Comprehensive Maintenance Base is located. Iryo reduces this figure to 7% and points out that it would not be too much of a problem since they are activities that can be scheduled based on the mileage of the trains. They emphasize that if Renfe does not give them access to their workshops they will have to take them to Rome and that this implies leaving them out of circulation for up to two months, a situation that they consider unfair. The company has not made any comment on the possibility of setting up its own workshops in Spain, just as promised upon arrival. They complain. The latter does not convince Renfe that she feels aggrieved in this fight. Back in the day, he discovered that Ouigo was carrying out heavy unscheduled maintenance work in his workshops. Now they believe that giving Iryo access to act in the same way is not fair because it is not specified or by the Directive 2012/34/EU (RECAST) on the single railway space nor the standard EN 15380-4:2021 Spanish. Faced with the first decision of the CNMC, Renfe responded by closing the door and putting forward its reasons but the organization stood firmand. The next thing was to appeal the decision to the National Court requesting very precautionary measures but these, as we say, have been rejected. At the moment, Justice forces the workshops to open but the procedure continues to decide whether, in the medium term, Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo must maintain this same balancing act or if the Spanish company can close the door on them. Photo | Renfe and Iryo In Xataka | There is a fight between the railway operators to get the best drivers and Renfe is winning it

Renfe makes its position in the workshop war clear to Iryo and the CNMC

May 14, 2026 by usatoday24

The Iryo-Renfe soap opera continues. Every day that passes we have a new chapter, a new exchange of statements, new figures on the table. And with each passing day, Iryo continues to find the door to the workshops closed. Although the CNMC obliges them, Renfe is clear: “they have no obligation.” The (pen)last chapter. It is the one that brings us the response from Renfe. And it is that, to questions from Xatakathe company tells us that the obligation imposed by the CNMC to open its workshops to Iryo has a “disproportionate impact” and there is a “technical impossibility.” The company assures that “adapting the workshops to the regime that the CNMC wants to impose” would take them a year. For now, the company has kept the Italian company’s workshops closed. And although Renfe clearly feels harmed, the company assures us that “we are studying how to do it (open the workshops) to carry out the CNMC’s decision, as it could not be otherwise.” Heavy or light. That’s the question. And since the liberalization of Spanish roads began, Renfe already knew that it would have to leave its workshops to Ouigo and Iryo to carry out light maintenance work. That is, routine checks of little significance. The problem is that these “light maintenance” operations are not clearly specified even in the Directive 2012/34/EU nor in the standard EN 15380-4:2021. This friction is what has led Renfe to deny passage to Iryo since it considers that in the proposed operations part of the train must be dismantled and that falls into the category of heavy maintenance. It must be remembered that Renfe already encountered this problem a few months ago. The Spanish company reported that Ouigo was carrying out heavy maintenance work at its facilities and that it had not previously reported this. Something that was proven, according to the company itself, by documents provided by the French company. The CNMC, on that occasion, also sided with Ouigo, forcing Renfe to lend its facilities for unforeseen interventions. Is it that big of a deal? Well, obviously, the versions differ here. No, it’s not that big a deal: Iryo is clear that the operations to be carried out in the Renfe workshops would not involve many problems. They assure that they would only occupy 7% of the infrastructure and that, since maintenance is scheduled weeks in advance, it is all a matter of organization. Yes, of course it is a big deal: Renfe, on the contrary, assures that these maintenance tasks seriously affect its schedule. They say that space is already operating at almost full capacity, that the impact of Iryo would be 10% of the infrastructure and that it would force them to withdraw 1.2 million seats from the offer because there would be no room to maintain their own trains. More than one million of these seats correspond to the lines in which it is handled as a Public Service Obligation (OSP) and this would result in a drop of 60 million euros in income. The CNMC is clear. The problem for Renfe is that the CNMC is clear about it and is on Iryo’s side. The regulator has already received a complaint that Renfe did not allow the Italian company to enter its workshops and issued a resolution forcing Renfe. This resolution was appealed before the National Court, which has decided to force Renfe to make way for Iryo in their workshops as a precautionary measure but with the notice that it will study the case in particular. The sticking point is that Iryo would need to send its trains to Rome for scheduled maintenance. That would force them, they say, to stop providing service with the trains involved for two months, a compelling reason for the CNMC despite the fact that In France Iryo was forced to take its trains to Italy despite the cessation of activity and despite the fact that the company announced that I would set up some workshops in Spain for these cases but nothing is known about them. Those are the cards that, for the moment, are on the table. Photo | Sergioorozco96 and Renfe In Xataka | There is a fight between the railway operators to get the best drivers and Renfe is winning it

In the “war of the workshops”, Iryo defends himself. And he has already made it clear to Renfe why he will use its facilities

May 12, 2026 by usatoday24

The battle for the use of Renfe workshops continues to give us new chapters. From the closed door and the complaint to the CNMC we have moved on to appeals to the latter’s decision and a crossroads of statements in which numbers are beginning to be put on the table. The last to speak was Iryo. What is happening? Iryo and Renfe have an open battle over the use of the latter company’s workshops. To understand all the keys: What does Renfe say? What Renfe says is that the regulations only require them to hand over part of their facilities to their rivals to carry out light maintenance, but that is not the case when the work involves heavy maintenance. Iryo’s actions fall under this last definition and Renfe already reported in October that Ouigo was performing heavy maintenance on their facilities without their permission. In addition, they point out that giving space to these trains from the Italian company will have a direct impact on their offer. If Iryo is occupying a space that Renfe had planned to use, the Spanish company estimates that they will have to withdraw from their offer around 1.2 million seatsof which more than one million fall within its Public Service Obligation (OSP). They estimate 60 million losses in income. What does the CNMC say? The CNMC considers that Renfe would obtain a substantial competitive advantage if Iryo has to send its trains to Italy to carry out heavy maintenance. They consider that, if this happens, it would stop providing service with the affected trains for weeks. (as has happened in France) and that maintaining them without performing said maintenance is a danger to the safety of passengers. For this reason, it forces Renfe to open its facilities and allow the Italian company to carry out these jobs with the employees it considers. In exchange, the Spanish company receives compensation as if it were a rental of the facilities. What does Iryo say? Until now we have known the version and calculations of Renfe but not of Iryo. The Italian company assures that moving its trains to its country would mean a extra cost of 17 million euros and defends that they would only be occupying 7% of all Renfe facilities. To estimate this extra cost, they calculate that if Iryo has to take the trains to Rome, they would stop being operational for about two months each, although, they point out in The Economistwhich on other occasions the company reduced this time horizon to one month. This operational stoppage, Iryo points out, would be key in the market because they compete with 19 trains available in our country, while Renfe has 270 high-speed trains at its disposal. And they culminate their complaints by pointing out that these actions are scheduled based on mileage and that Renfe was aware that they would have to carry out these operations for months. A music that sounds familiar to us. The truth is that railway liberalization in Europe has created a constant fight between operators that, as we are seeing, sometimes goes far beyond the tracks. Renfe has pressed everything it can to prevent Iryo from carrying out these maintenance tasks at its facilities but has also recalled that the company has to work on all high speed lines and not only in the most profitable since, unlike Ouigo and Iryo, they work as a public service operator. Furthermore, remember that upon arrival Iryo committed to building his own workshops but no steps have been taken in that direction. At the same time, it is logical that Iryo tries by all means to carry out its maintenance work in Spain to minimize its impact on the offer. And, as we said before, in France they have already forced the company to take your trains back to Italy to perform this type of maintenance. Country where Renfe has also encountered countless obstacles to deploy your servicesespecially in everything related to his arrival in Pariswhere the most profitable lines start. Photo |Smiley.toerist and Renfe In Xataka | If the question is when Ouigo was going to be profitable, the answer is: now. And that makes Renfe suspicious

Renfe already calculates how much it will cost to leave its workshops to Iryo

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Renfe will have to give up part of its workshops so that Iryo can carry out its heavy maintenance. It is the decision that the CNMC has imposed on the Spanish company and that it will have to comply with until, at the earliest, the National Court rules. But it will have its consequences. What has happened? When Ouigo and Iryo entered to compete in our country, Renfe already knew that it would have to give up part of its workshops so that both companies could carry out maintenance work. In exchange, both the French and Italian companies have to pay the company to be able to operate in their facilities. These maintenance tasks were “level 1”, the name used to define “light maintenance” operations. However, Renfe reported a few months ago that Ouigo was performing heavy maintenance workwhich is outside the agreement. And a few months ago it closed the door on Iryo, because the company planned to do the same. However, the CNMC has forced Renfe to open its doors to the Italian company. According to Competition, failure to do so puts Iryo’s business strategy at risk, which would give Renfe an unfair advantage. The company has filed an appeal against this decision but the National Court has concluded that it will study the case but that, as a precautionary measure, Renfe must open the door to its facilities. What does each one defend? From the Spanish company they assure that Iryo had a project to build its own workshops in our country and thus not having to take their trains to Italy. However, these workshops have not seen the light and Renfe believes that they should not pay the consequences of one of their rivals not complying with its roadmap. For its part, the CNMC assures that forcing Iryo to undergo maintenance in Italy would leave them with less rolling stock available for weeks and, therefore, at a disadvantage in the market. And keeping that rolling stock in operation is a bad decision because the deadlines are met and it would lead the company to have vehicles on Spanish roads that could be unsafe. Iryo’s parent company, Trenitalia, has already experienced this same thing. in France when they had to suspend their services for a month because SNCF prevented access to its workshops to carry out maintenance work. Consequences. Knowing the situation, Renfe has put on the table the consequences that opening its facilities to Iryo may have to carry out heavy maintenance work. And, without that space for their own work, the entry of the Italian company into their space forces them to reduce the number of jobs they can carry out on their own material. That is to say: they would have to reduce the number of trains that are currently in operation. According to the company, in words collected by elDiario.es“the immediate consequence would be fewer trains available each day and, therefore, the suppression of public services in the usual schedule. The lower capacity for heavy maintenance would also have a chain effect and could lead to a progressive paralysis of the fleet in a few weeks.” And in numbers? In total, the company believes that it would affect around thirty daily circulations distributed in different corridors depending on the trains used, which would be the affected by giving space to Ouigo and Iryo in the workshops. They assure that the Madrid-Barcelona (Serie 103), the most profitable corridor today, would have two fewer daily circulations per direction. In total, they would have to reduce 10% of the seats offered and they estimate the impact at 650,000 kilometers per year that would no longer be traveled, some 1,100 circulations eliminated and 450,000 fewer seats on offer. As for the Galician corridor, the trains to Huelva and the Basque Country (Series 120 and 121), together they would add a reduction of 1.5 million fewer kilometers per year, more than 3,300 circulations eliminated and some 800,000 fewer seats available. In total, each day it is estimated that there would be 16 trains inoperative on these lines. And in the Avant of Valladolid they calculate a suppression of six daily trains or the reduction of the double trains that are currently operational during rush hour. In total, Renfe estimates that there are 1.2 million of its own seats at stake. Of them, more than a million are part of what is known as Public Service Obligation (OSP) and they believe that it can impact with a decrease in income of up to 60 million euros. Aggrieved? The feeling of grievance is not new within the company and the Ministry of Transportation. In April 2024 they already made it clear that they considered that the rules were not fair because while Ouigo and Iryo only have to serve where they consider it beneficial to their interests, Renfe is obliged in going to brokers where economic viability is not guaranteed. Added to this is that the company feels doubly harmed. And Renfe has been trying to expand its business in France for some time but Many obstacles have been found in the neighboring country to reach Paris, the most economically juicy link in the neighboring country. And from the Ministry of Transportation they have repeated on several occasions that Ouigo is a company supported by the French State and that it would not be able to operate if it had to face its debts on its own. Diffuse. The problem, explained in Chain Being is that the Directive 2012/34/EU (RECAST) on the single railway space and the standard EN 15380-4:2021 They do not clearly specify what is considered light or heavy maintenance. In the first it is pointed out that heavy maintenance is all those tasks that are not routine and in the second it is defined as the works in which the train has to be dismantled. However, these definitions do not seem to be sufficient for competitors as they have different perspectives of what is and is … Read more

Renfe has found a new way to make life impossible for Ouigo and Iryo. And it has nothing to do with lowering prices.

May 5, 2026 by usatoday24

Renfe maintains a hidden war with Ouigo and Iryo. Beyond the headlines and the exchanges of more or less high-sounding statements, the Spanish company and its rivals fight on all types of grounds. Also outside the train tracks and the most obvious sources of business. And here, the use of workshops has a lot to say. What has happened? Renfe has prevented Iryo from using its workshops so that the company can carry out heavy maintenance on its trains. The information is brought The Economist and it states that the Spanish company has rejected Italians’ access to its facilities because they consider that the activity to be carried out there exceeds the obligations they have towards their rivals. In Xataka We have contacted both companies but as of this writing we have not received answers to our questions. The obligations. Although the facilities belong to Renfe, the Spanish company has the obligation to allow access to its workshops at specific points in Spain so that Ouigo and Iryo can carry out their maintenance operations. However, this obligation is limited to light maintenance, known in the sector as “level 1” maintenance. This scale of what falls within “light” or “level 1” maintenance and what are “heavy” or “level 2” maintenance interventions are those that have been questioned by Renfe. The company is clear, Iryo wants to carry out operations of this second category and they are not obliged to give access to their workshops for this type of tasks. The CNMC. Given the denial of access to the workshops, Iryo went to the CNMC to mediate the matter. The National Markets and Competition Commission ruled in March that Renfe had to give Iryo access to its facilities where Hitachi employees would carry out maintenance services on Iryo trains. Although Renfe, Iryo and Hitachi seemed to have reached an agreement for the latter company (manufacturer of Iryo trains) to carry out maintenance at Renfe facilities, the Spanish company indicated that this could not be carried out because heavy maintenance activity related to Renfe trains had skyrocketed and there was no space left for such actions. Given this situation, Iryo requested provisional measures from the CNMC to access “an operational pit at BMI La Sagra or, subsidiarily, at BM Santa Catalina, on a self-provision basis, for the execution of heavy maintenance (R2) of the ETR 1000.” An access that the CNMC decided to give. The reasons. The CNMC pointed out in its resolution that denying Iryo access to the workshops directly damages the business plans that it has for our country since it would force the trains to be taken to Italy to undergo said heavy maintenance. For Renfe, this should not be a problem but the CNMC rejects this position of the Spanish company. Iryo trains approach the mileage limit before passing through workshops for a thorough inspection. When Iryo arrived in Spain, it stated that it would have its own workshops where it would carry out its maintenance. However, this has not occurred. However, the CNMC forces Renfe to provide access to its facilities to carry out these tasks, with the rates that were negotiated in the summer of 2025. Not compliant. In clear rejection of the CNMC’s decision, Renfe requests the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court to stop this decision and asks the CNMC to quarantine the decision until the National Court confirms what measures should be taken. The National Court, however, does not find it serious enough to apply precautionary measures, although it does confirm that it is opening a file to study the matter in depth. With this decision, the CNMC remains firm and once again forces Renfe to make way for Iryo trains in its workshops so that Hitachi workers can carry out scheduled heavy maintenance. It’s not the first time. Although we have talked about Iryo so far, the truth is that Renfe is not the first time that it has denied entry to its workshops to one of its rivals or, at the very least, has put up all possible impediments. In October of last year, the situation was very similar although, on that occasion It was Renfe and Ouigo who led the conflict. The reason was the same, according to Renfe the activity that Ouigo wanted to carry out in his workshops exceeded his company’s obligations to lend its facilities to carry out light maintenance. The fight between the three companies is tough because if Iryo and Ouigo do not get access to the Renfe workshops, they have to send their trains to Italy and France, respectively, where they do have their own workshops. That, of course, temporarily takes some of its trains out of circulation, which undoubtedly benefits its competitors. Photo | Investing Spain and UGT In Xataka | Spain has thousands of kilometers of AVE: the question after the Adamuz accident is whether it is investing in maintaining them

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