At long last, high-speed trains (AVEs) started operating out of Granada train station, connecting Granada to Madrid in just over three hours.

Granada spent over two years without any trains at all, so this long-awaited high-speed-train is just the ticket – excuse the pun.

These trains are affectionately known as El Pato (The Duck) owing to its duck-bill-like appearance.

Tickets for these first trips, which started on the 26th of last month, were all sold out long before the launch date, all 23,000 of them, so you will need some patience – after all it only took 20 years from the first announcement to the trains actually running.

Now, bear in mind that we will have  high-speed trains operating on a normal-speed rail track in some places,

Such is the importance of this event that the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez and a bevy of lesser politicians will be there at the inauguration on the 26th when the first train pulls out at 09.15h

If you’re going to have a sod-off train, then you need a reasonably sod-off station – glass front, views of the Sierra Nevada and the Alhambra and a cafeteria eager to castrate your wallet.

How much is the ticket going to cost you? Well, 35 euros for Madrid and 45 euros for Barcelona. But this is just a launching offer because the real price is 64.25 euros for Madrid and 118,10 euros for Barcelona for a single.