Rail route of the month: Barcelona to Cádiz, the slow train right across Spain

Our slow travel expert takes a 12-hour odyssey from Mediterranean Catalonia – via Cervantes, bandit and sherry country – to Atlantic Andalucía

Two long-distance trains leave Barcelona Sants station just after nine each morning. There’s the French TGV to Paris, 668 miles and almost seven hours to the north. The other train, much the more interesting of the two, is the 09.05 to Cádiz, a journey of 12 hours, covering 800 miles. This is one of Spain’s finest domestic train journeys, a great cross-country transect linking the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia with the Atlantic shores of Andalucía. The train manager on the four-carriage train to Cádiz captures it rather nicely when she says: “Welcome to the fast train to nowhere and the slow train to everywhere.”

The beauty of this dawdling journey across Spain is that it honours distance and landscapes. Despite a couple of short, high-speed stretches, the train to Cádiz generally doesn’t hurry. There’s a meditative appeal in making a long journey through a litany of changing landscapes. When did you last have 12 hours to yourself? There’s time to think, just daydream and gaze out of the window. Along the way it swaps Catalonia’s restrained charm for the fiery warmth and sensual appeal of the Spanish south. Remember Byron’s The Girl of Cadiz, who was “born beneath a brighter sun”.