Cristina should have left Madrid Puerta de Atocha-Almudena Grandes station this Wednesday on the 6:45 p.m. train and arrived in Toledo half an hour later. But the schedule was not respected. Not at all. She arrived at the station in the capital of Castilla-La Mancha at 9:50 p.m., two hours and forty-five minutes late.
“The first thing they told us from Renfe was that there was a breakdown in the infrastructure and that they already knew about it, because the previous train to Toledo, the 5:45 p.m. one, was stopped in Getafe. And yet, they put us on the train,” says Cristina. “We went forward about a hundred meters, it stopped, they were waiting for us and told us that it would be fixed in about twenty minutes,” he continues.
But no, they didn’t even move. “They invited us to go out and get some air on the platform and they kept us there for another half hour. Then they told us to continue the journey and we did, hoping to get home as soon as possible. But no more. “We went on about a hundred meters, now without a platform where we could get out, and at the Méndez Álvaro station it stopped again. They kept us there until we managed to pick up speed and reach Toledo,” where the passengers bound for Madrid were waiting, also desperate.
During the journey, a couple felt dizzy, but the company staff could not provide them with water or other drinks because the machine was sealed. “They told us they weren’t giving us anything,” he says. Cristina adds that, according to Renfe, it was a signalling fault that affected all trains entering and leaving Atocha.
The supervisor informed them that after 24 hours they could ask for a refund of the ticket money. “But it costs them two euros per passenger with the voucher,” he laments.
For this regular passenger, these setbacks are not new. “Unfortunately, we suffer from it daily. It happens every day. It’s horrible. I’ve been making this trip for work for fifteen years and what I’ve suffered for the last year and a half, we’ve never suffered before,” he says.
Today he will fall asleep with the anxiety of what will happen this Thursday when he leaves the Spanish capital to go to work. An adventure that can become a new test.
