No it isn’t necessary however there have been reports of this behaviour from Spanish staff before.
Sadly as buying in person is the only option you may just have to play along and activate the pass for the travel day in question, you can and should deactivate it again once you have the reservation bought.
RENFE is very, very cautious in making people not just buy the RES only and then blocking seats for what they could have sold for normal prices-these AVE are in heavy demand, the more so now in summer=hi-season.
There have also even been reports here that people had to act. passday-same day and then were advised ´no seats´=that means you cannot de-activate that day anymore.
From their side its understandable, but it remains PITA for passholders @1 with 3***
No it isn’t necessary however there have been reports of this behaviour from Spanish staff before.
Sadly as buying in person is the only option you may just have to play along and activate the pass for the travel day in question, you can and should deactivate it again once you have the reservation bought.
You should never activate today's date as a travel day unless you are 100% sure that you will travel today. So never do that for today's date. If it is a day in the future, then you can activate the travel day and then deactivate the day, just as @Al_G says.
