Starting this Wednesday, May 1, it is necessary to have the new Renfe pass to continue traveling for free both on Rodalies and on medium distances. To obtain it, you must pay a deposit (10 euros in the case of Rodalies; 20 in the medium distance) which will be returned once the new subscription – which is valid, like the previous ones, for four months – expires. The novelty of this new ticket is that, unlike those that have preceded it, it has a QR code. This means that, for the lathe to open, it is not necessary to insert it into the slot of the machine (if you do, it does not work), but rather the lathe has a reader that, when you approach the bill, reads the QR and open the floodgates. Well, this reading is giving errors, so many passengers are not being able to access the origin stations and leave the destination stations.
When consulted by this newspaper, Renfe explains that there is no problem with the turnstiles, that everything is working normally. But reality says the opposite. A user who makes the daily trip between Cubelles and Barcelona explains that the turnstiles give an error when the card is shown to them so they can read it and open the gates. “A person in yellow overalls at the station told me that she had to leave it for a while, and so I did.” She says that he left it on the lathe reader for a long time while it informed him of a reading error until, “after a long time,” it opened up.
“Over the public address system, meanwhile, they announced that there was a problem with reading the QR codes and that we should go to the window, where they would give us a free ten-ride bonus train, one of those that goes through the turnstile slot. But the Cubelles window is permanently closed,” he adds.
At the Barcelona-Sants station, and probably due to this problem with reading the QR codes, travelers arriving from different points in Catalonia and accessing the station lobby met (both on Thursday and today, Friday) with several workers dressed in yellow overalls who loudly indicated that it was not necessary to take out the bill to open the turnstile, which only when approached would open automatically.
Renfe explains to La Vanguardia that it is necessary to hold the card in front of the reader for a moment so that the lathe can read the code and that this process is not as instantaneous, for example, as in the case of the T-Mobilitat card, with the one where “the floodgates open faster.”
“Hello @Renfe. Can you indicate the machines that work in Catalonia to renew the recurring subscription please?” Lara complained on the social network X. “Renfe Cercanías de Catalunya is getting worse and worse. They do not sell you the recurring subscription at the window, forcing you to buy it at the self-service machines, and of the six that there are in Sitges, only two work,” Fernando denounced in the same way.
Indeed, and beyond the problem with the turnstiles, these days there have been queues at numerous stations to obtain the new pass. And not all the ticket dispensing machines, rather a few, were prepared to print the new pass, which generated queues to access the few that did.
The Minister of Territory of the Generalitat, Ester Capella, announced this Thursday in statements to the press that the Government has called a meeting of the mixed Generalitat-Renfe commission next Monday after the breakdown of the ticket sales system. The capella explained that she has urgently convened the commission, which must serve to begin working on issues that affect the service provided to citizens.
