Note that I’m no longer talking about visas, or about my preparations to move, but rather about the AVE, the Spanish high-speed train, which today (February 20 when I started this post) made its first runs between Barcelona and Madrid. I can’t wait to get to Barcelona, and at some point to give this thing a try — I love zippy trains.

Today’s first-ever commercial departure, packed with more journalists and television crews than regular passengers, left Estació Sants on time (6am), and arrived at Madrid’s Estación Atocha early…a good start! And they run every hour until 9pm (with four per hour during peak hours!), so it’s really going to be moving a lot of people, and quickly. It takes under 2 hours and 40 minutes, moving (for most of the trip) at 300 km/h. The prices are not bad, either (I can only imagine how much such a thing would cost in Canada — just a regular Mtl-Ottawa train can be more expensive than a cheap AVE ticket Bcn-Madrid!). It will definitely shake up the domestic air market, with perhaps six million people expected to use this new route in 2008.

Unlike those ads that used to run on TV here, I can’t go point at the AVE and say: “That’s a Bombardier!” In fact, some of the AVE trains in the RENFE system are made by our Montreal friends, but the ones running on the Bcn-Madrid line are the S/103s, made by Siemens; a train that has the world record for fastest unmodified commercial service trainset (yes, faster than the Japanese Shinkansen, because their record was using a test model). Of course, for a whole range of comfort/maintenance/safety reasons, they won’t run it over 300km/h, even though they could technically go over 400km/h.

Now, if they can figure out a way to keep the Sagrada Familia or Casa Milà from collapsing into an underground tunnel, they hope to open new track all the way to the French border in 2009 (2010, anyone?). There’s been lots of controversy about where it should route under — or around — the city. Last year, many balconies in the Sagrada Familia area had big sheets hanging out, painted with: “AVE per litoral” or “AVE=Carmel”, indicating a few alternatives the locals would prefer (essentially, on one side or the other of the neighbourhood).