"A bus will be waiting for you at the McDonald's door," says the controller of the train that I got on in Lebrija to get to Seville. The Renfe employee had to call the Santa Justa station, the main station in the Andalusian capital, to warn that this initial train on which I am traveling is already arriving 15 minutes late.
“Once you arrive, you have ten minutes to spare,” he insists. «Please do not linger at the station. You have to leave Santa Justa and you will see your bus. "The driver has been warned that you are arriving with a connecting train, but don't dawdle, for God's sake!"
My final destination is Madrid. A week after the tragic accident in Urda (Toledo) in which 69 passengers died, I board the alternative route that Renfe has to connect Seville and the Spanish capital if one cannot go by car or plane, with flight prices skyrocketing.
With the high-speed line between both cities cut for the moment - it will return to service within a maximum period of 10 days from the moment the judicial authority authorizes the start of the reconstruction works - the only option to travel by train between Seville and Madrid is to take a route through Extremadura, from south to north of the region.
But if before it took around two and a half hours to make that same journey, the trip I am about to start takes nine. That's being optimistic. If there are no delays along the way, I will have left Seville before noon and will arrive in Madrid at dinner time.
The paradoxical thing about this train trip is that the first section of the journey is done by road. Seville-Zafra (Badajoz). 137 kilometers await me by bus, despite the fact that on its website Renfe sells tickets as train tickets, with the warning that part of the route is not on rails, but on asphalt. It is because that section of road has been remodeled since September 19. The works, as announced by Renfe itself, should have been completed on October 20. But this Thursday the bus service that connects Seville with the town of Badajoz is still active.
EUFREMIO AND HIS TRIPS FOR PLEASURE
11:54 a.m. Four minutes late from the scheduled departure time of my train/bus to Madrid. We start the path. The bus is half empty. Just over twenty passengers. The majority are foreigners. I sit in one of the back rows.
A Sevillian couple makes a video call to a family member. They are on their way to Cáceres. The conversation, which can be heard from my seat, begins with banal topics, until Urda's accident appears.
"Write or call all the time throughout the trip, please," their interlocutor tells them. «It's no use. If it has to happen to us...», they respond. «The train we are going to take in Zafra is slower than the bad guy's horse. Now we're going by bus, look. But another train accident a week later would be bad luck.
We arrived in Zafra at 20:20 in the afternoon. The train to Madrid does not leave until 2:21 p.m. There is a 39 minute wait. Many passengers take the opportunity to go to the station bathroom or to the small cafeteria in the railway facility. Eufremio Gómez, on the other hand, prefers to wait at the foot of the platform. Like me, he goes to Madrid.
Eufremio resides in Móstoles. He is 75 years old. He lives alone, he is a widower. Since he retired, every time he gets "crazy" he takes out some train tickets to any point in Spain. As his plans were to travel as much as he could with his late wife, it is now his children who push him to leave the house and "see the world."
A month ago, Eufremio bought two train tickets to Seville. The outward route was for the Renfe regional train (for this same route, but in the opposite direction). The one back, an AVE. But after Urda's accident he had to change his ticket to return home.
«I have been in Seville for two days visiting the city, walking... Although the accident makes your stomach turn, I did not think about canceling the trip. I'm not afraid of another accident. If a plane crashes, we are not going to think that two days later another one is going to crash. Well this is the same. What's more, I already have the seats to go to Santander in January, also by train. "I go for the pure pleasure of traveling without rushing."
2:21 p.m. A medium-distance train without a cafeteria—only vending machines—departs for Madrid. Zafra station is located on the outskirts of the town. In the cafeteria they have served about twenty packaged meals to take away.
A canned woman's voice sounds over the train's public address system. «Next stop: Zafra Fair». I have a suspicion that the trip is going to have the same number of stops as a Madrid metro line. “Patience,” says a woman who sits a few rows back. The woman rests a cage on her thighs in which she carries her cat, which lets out a meow from time to time.
Next stop: Los Santos de Maimona. Then they will arrive at Tierra de Barros, Almendralejo, Calamonte, Mérida, Cáceres... Along the way there is a certain rattle in the wagons. People look at each other with worried expressions, but no one says anything.
The same thing happens when we approach one of the first stops and the driver lets out a burst of beeps that seems endless. Or when a suitcase falls to the floor of the carriage and there is a loud bang.
The trip on this train is extremely different from that of the AVE. With the regional one you pass through towns where there are still barriers with level crossings that cut off the circulation of cars when a railway crosses. The landscape is not as uniform as that of high speed. This train passes 50 meters, and at low speed, from the Roman aqueduct of Mérida.
"Train users live in suspense"
In Mérida dozens of people get up. The train is almost full. Students, backpackers, people who work in Madrid, foreign tourists who are going back to the capital to catch a plane to their country of origin...
Juan works in the banking sector in Madrid. He prefers that his last names not appear. Although he has lived in the capital of Spain for a decade, his parents continue to reside in Mérida, his hometown. As he had a few days of vacation pending to enjoy, he has been at home during the past weekend and the beginning of this one. This Thursday he returned to the capital.
«I am used to using this train, but for those who are not, it is death by pinching because it has countless stops and because it accumulates a lot of delays some days. I also usually come to visit my parents by car, but I have it in the workshop right now and I had to resort to the train. I had no other choice. Those of us who are fluent train users now live with our hearts on edge when we hear a creak from the track, when the car vibrates too much...,” says Juan.
«Now we can no longer trust even when a train is stopped in the middle of the track. Who says that the train coordination system cannot fail anywhere else in the country? "We have gone from being an example in the world for our railway network to distrusting even the last kilometer of train tracks in the country."
At the Mérida stop (4:11 p.m.) Cristina Guisado gets on. He is an architecture student in Madrid. He is 22 years old. She carries a briefcase with her. He says he makes this same journey at least once a month.
«My father told me that, if I wanted, he could take me to Madrid by car. But I preferred to save him that trip. There's no need. I think he and my mother have a worse time than I do when I go by train since the first big accident, the one in Adamuz (Córdoba).
Although it was not on this route, it leaves you very uneasy knowing that there are failures in the infrastructure. If high speed has deficient rails or suffers failures in the traffic control service, as seems to have happened now, what will there not be in the country's secondary train network? I imagine that the Seville-Madrid line would be more controlled than this one. Well, I guess not, I'm sure, but... It is what it is.
When there are 20 minutes left to get to the Atocha Cercanías stop, a couple chats next to my seat. Ella, from Córdoba, says her back is “like an L.” "It hurts, kid." He, from Cádiz, answers: «This train leaves you devastated. Now we go directly to the hostel. "A shower and go to sleep."
