Spain’s high-speed rail service is called AVE, short for Alta Velocidad Española, meaning “Spanish High Speed.”
Renfe introduced the first AVE service in 1992 on the Madrid–Córdoba–Seville route, timed to serve Seville’s Expo ’92. The trains used a newly built standard-gauge line and could reach 300 km/h, marking a major change from Spain’s traditional Iberian-gauge railway network.
AVE is best understood as Renfe’s flagship high-speed service, not the name of every fast train or every kilometre of Spanish high-speed infrastructure. Other services, including Avant, Alvia, Avlo, Ouigo España and Iryo, also use parts of the network. Renfe operates AVE, while infrastructure is managed by ADIF.
The name also creates a linguistic joke: “ave” means “bird” in Spanish. Talgo is a train manufacturer and design family, while RENFE is the railway company—neither is the name of Spain’s principal high-speed service.