Renfe high-speed surpasses one million passengers between Catalonia and France

Spain's public rail operator, Renfe, has operated a high-speed service connecting Catalonia and France that has surpassed one million passengers since its start.

Renfe launched two direct services during the summer of 2023 from Barcelona to Lyon and from Madrid to Marseille.

Both routes connect Barcelona with a dozen other cities, many of them in France.

The route uniting the Spanish capital with the seaside city of Marseille, the second most inhabited city after Paris, accounts for 60% of the available tickets. However, the main route in the number of origin-destination passengers connects the Catalan capital with Lyon.

These figures will increase during the last half of 2025 as the operator launches a third route to France, connecting Barcelona and Toulouse. This train service already existed and once the operations are recovered, it will stop in the medieval city of Carcassonne.

It was first reported that trains would start crossing the border in April.

With the new destination, the public operator will offer six direct trains per day, three each way, between Catalonia and France, connecting 17 cities in total across two countries.

Renfe's main goal, a route to Paris, is still in the works. The Spanish rail operator is waiting for its trains to be homologated, which it hopes will happen "as soon as possible."

The public company hoped to be in service by the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, but despite an increase in train passengers by 62%, this did not happen. At the moment, SNCF, France's public rail operator, is the only company serving Barcelona to Paris with a high-speed train connection.

The route is served exclusively by TGV Inoui and connects the two capitals with stops in Girona, Figueres, Perpignan, Narbonne, Montpellier, and Nîmes, among others.   

Passengers reach Paris Gare de Lyon from Barcelona in 6 hours and 45 minutes. 

Before SNCF and Renfe competed for the French-Spanish market, the two public companies formed a joint venture. However, the collaboration ended in December 2022 when SNCF started its Paris-Barcelona service after breaking up the deal in February of that year.