Spain's luxury trains

Renfe calls it a five-star hotel on rails. Its saloon cars are original Pullmans of 1923, one of them glazed for the view, with a pub car that has live music every night; its fourteen Suites Gran Lujo each have a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom of their own. Meals are cooked aboard by the train’s chef, from the cooking of the regions it crosses.

The Ruta del Norte takes a week along the Cantabrian coast, in either direction: Bilbao, Santander, the Picos de Europa, Santillana del Mar, Llanes, Oviedo and Gijón, the fishing towns of Luarca and Ribadeo, Viveiro, and a guided visit of Santiago de Compostela at the end. We arrange the nights before and after, in San Sebastián and Santiago.

Its sleeping cars belong to the same series as those built in France early in the last century to carry the British royal family between Calais and the Riviera, and its four saloon cars date from 1928 and 1930: restaurant cars, a bar car and a tea salon. Twenty suites and twelve smaller rooms, all with their own bathroom.

Since 2026 its route, the Ruta Ibérica del Sur, reaches beyond Andalusia: from Seville to Jerez for its bodegas and horses, to Cádiz, to Córdoba and the Mezquita-Catedral, then to Roman Mérida and medieval Cáceres, Toledo, and the Royal Palace and gardens of Aranjuez, ending in Madrid, or the other way round. We arrange your nights in Seville or Madrid at either end.