Skip to main content

Hello community,

does anybody know how to deal with the following situation: We are in Spain near Barcelona and according to Interrail we are allowed to use the regional train RE1 to Barcelona City with our Global Pass. But at the local train station we need paper tickets to pass the electronic gate. So we had to buy paper tickets at the station, although we already had valid tickets. Do we have any chance to get our money back? And do you know how to deal with such situations in future? 
Would be glad for any advice…

You should not buy any tickets but go to a manually assisted gate to get through. There should be gates for persons needing assistance. Or a phone where you can call for help.


Hey Anna.

Unfortunately there weren‘t any people who could give assistance, the service point was closed. And at the assistance phone nobody anwered :(

Bur we‘re gonna try to fix this directly with Interrail now. Thanks anyway!


This is an old-age problem that also existed wenn there were only paper-passes-these gates only work with the local tickets with magnetic stripes. I have mentioned this fairly often in relevant points.

Same-same exist in the PT/LIsboa area for smaller local stations where they have chipcards and not old-style stripes, but in essence it boils down to the same


@Nanja maybe the page about Spain (and the network guide in the app) could be updated with what to do when you have to pass a gate at an unstaffed station? I'm sure RENFE can give you information about that.


Thanks for the suggestion rvdborgt. Will look into it and come back to you on that. 


Reply