Trip 45

January 17, 2024

Our train from Barcelona’s Saints Estacio station to Madrid left at 10:00 am, so we were off a little earlier than normal today, arriving at the station about 8:30. The station is directly across from the hotel Nobu, where we stayed on arrival. The first task is to find out from which track the train will leave and where the track is. Tracks aren’t usually posted nearly this long in advance, but we inquired at the information desk and then located the track. Before going thru security screening (no different than an airport), we grabbed some food to take on board since we’ll arrive about 1:15 (3 hrs 15 minutes). Boarding started queuing up before 9:30 and we found our seats on the high speed train.

It takes a bit to get out of the Barcelona urban area before the train can get up to speed. Although the Renfe Avlo train has a rated top speed of 320 km/h, the highest I saw on the in-car display was 298 km/h (185 mph). There is WiFi onboard. We made a few brief stops along the way and our compartment was probably 2/3 full. At one point we crossed over a sizable river. I pulled up the maps app to see what it was. It was the Ebro river. The name Iberia (Spain makes up the largest part of the Iberian peninsula) was first used in the 6th century BC by a Greek author in reference to the Iberians, or the people who lived along the Iberus river. Today Spanish-speakers call it the Ebro and Catalan-speakers the Ebre.

Spain itself takes its name from the Latin Hispania. The word is probably Phoenician in origin, derived from shepham probably meaning ‘coast or island of rabbits‘. The rabbit, at the time, was endemic and virtually restricted to the Peninsula. The oldest existing fossil of a rabbit is a specimen from 2.5 million years ago found in Granada. In fact, the rabbit did not really expand from Iberia until the Phoenicians, began to export it around the Mediterranean. Roman coins struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a rabbit at her feet. No rabbits were sighted on our journey. 😉

There is a lot of pork farming and the Spanish love their ham.

The scenery is not particularly exciting. There’s an awful lot of (too steep to cultivate) rolling hills and some mountains , and the exposed cuts through the hills through which the rail line passed showed rocky, sedimentary soil, while the landscape was mostly scrubby plants (hardly enough even for grazing cattle) and (until reaching near Madrid) few trees.

This got me wondering about the geology and the agriculture in Spain. I did see some cultivated areas and some (likely) grape vines and olive trees (hard to tell at 185 mph). But since Spain has a wide variety of climates , from Mediterranean to arid mountains and subtropical (Canary islands), we’re only seeing a microcosm of those. 85% of the agricultural surface of Spain is located in areas which are not considered favourable due to limitations such as aridity, rockiness and slope. Large areas of Spain are potentially affected by desertification: more than two thirds of the Spanish territory belong to the categories of arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. There are more than 800,000 farmers in Spain, but their farms are small , only 12.5 acres.

Arriving in Madrid, we needed to find the Metro and ticket machines. The Metro operates with reloadable cards, so you designate how many tickets you want on your card and the zone; this is similar to every other major city in which we’ve used a metro. It was four short stops from the train station to the stop nearest our hotel, but on exiting the metro, it was drizzling. Probably a five minute walk, but we got damp before getting to the hotel. Check-in was quick and they offered us a cocktail in the lounge before heading up to the room (by which time, of course, it had quit raining).

By evening it was time to go see what we could find for a snack. We duplicated the “churros and chocolate “ we had in Barcelona at this establishment, which has been doling out the combo since 1894.

I think the churros here are better, crispier, than those we had in Barcelona.

On the way back, we strolled though one of the main squares in central Madrid and where we initially exited the Metro.

Though it’s 9pm, there are lots of people out (and many shops are still open) , as people in Spain tend to eat dinner much later than Americans.