Madrid to Seville
High-Speed to Andalusia

Trains for Seville leave from Madrid Puerta de Atocha, the capital's grand southern terminus - the one with the tropical garden growing inside the original 19th-century trainshed. Atocha is Spain's high-speed hub, and the Seville platforms sit behind luggage screening: bags go through an airport-style scanner before you reach the train, and boarding typically closes a couple of minutes before departure.

The practical translation: arrive around 20–30 minutes early, more at peak times, and treat the posted boarding time seriously rather than the departure time. Once aboard, the transformation is quick - the suburbs fall away and the train is soon running flat-out across open country.

The first hour is pure meseta: the vast, level tableland of Castilla–La Mancha, all wheat, vines and enormous horizons - the landscape Cervantes gave to Don Quixote. At close to 300 km/h it streams past in a way that makes the region's emptiness feel cinematic rather than monotonous, and it is a genuinely different Spain from the one waiting at the far end of the line.

Some services call at Ciudad Real and Puertollano, the two Manchegan stops the 1992 line put on the map; the fastest trains pass them without slowing much. Then the land begins to crease and rise: the Sierra Morena, the long range that walls Andalusia off from the plateau, and the train threads through it in a sequence of cuttings and tunnels.

An hour of Don Quixote's plains, a mountain range, and then the South - few trains change worlds this quickly.

On the far side of the mountains the train drops into the Guadalquivir valley and calls at Córdoba - under two hours from Madrid and, for many travellers, the best reason to make this journey in two stages. The Mezquita, Córdoba's mosque-cathedral with its forest of striped arches, is one of the most extraordinary buildings in Europe, and the old town around it is compact enough to walk from the station.

If your schedule allows, break the journey here for a night - or at least a long afternoon - and continue to Seville on a later train. Córdoba to Seville is well under an hour, so the detour costs little travel time.

The line ends at Sevilla Santa Justa, built for the 1992 Expo along with the railway itself. The station sits north-east of the centre: the cathedral and the Barrio Santa Cruz are around half an hour on foot, or a short ride by taxi or city bus. However you cover it, the arrival is the point - Seville's old town is one of the largest and most atmospheric in Europe, and you have reached it in the time a flight would have spent on formalities.

Give the city more than a day if you can: the cathedral and the Giralda, the Alcázar, the Plaza de España's great tiled crescent, and evenings that only start when the heat lifts. In high summer, plan around the afternoon - Seville is one of the hottest cities in Europe, and the siesta exists for a reason.

Madrid–Seville is no longer a one-operator route. Renfe's AVE has run the line since 1992, and Spain's open-access reforms have brought competition - the private operator iryo runs the corridor, and Spain's low-cost high-speed brands continue to expand across the network. Which companies run which departures changes with the timetable, so compare current options when you book rather than assuming one brand.

Three rules of thumb keep it simple. First, tickets are operator-specific: a ticket for one company will not be accepted on another's train, even on the same route at a similar time. Second, the cheapest fares on all operators are advance, non-flexible tickets - pay slightly more for a flexible fare if your plans might move. Third, luggage allowances and extras (seat selection, larger bags) vary by operator and fare, particularly on low-cost services, so check what is included before choosing on price alone.