Last Updated on 29 April 2024 by gerry

“Abonament recurrent” – the magic words that got us rail travel effectively for free in the Barcelona province for our whole stay. We’re indebted to Marta for this marvellous tip. It translates to “recurring subscription” and the idea funded by central and devolved government across Spain is to get frequent travellers onto the trains and off the road by offering a ticket that just costs €10 for 4 months rail travel on all the lines in the province of Barcelona. I believe there is a €20 subscription that would give you the same for rail travel across Catalonia. It was first introduced for the September-December period in 2022 and has been extended for the 3 “semesters” of 2023, so we can use this €10 ticket for our whole stay and apparently may even get the €10 refunded if we make 16 trips.

Marta is a Catalan friend I first met in 2018 and she lives in the next town north along the coast – Canet de Mar. Marta strongly encouraged us to make use of the Abonament recurrent, so we took her advice and used it to go visit her and explore Canet de Mar. It is Saturday morning and the sun is out. By the time we are waiting on the platform at the station in Arenys we are peeling off our coats.

The train journey takes a mere 3 minutes and rather like Arenys de Mar, Canet de Mar has a Riera main street, very easily found from the railway station. Walking up through the market stalls, I sense more of a hippy vibe in this town. We’d briefly seen the market stalls on the Riera in Arenys de Mar as we made our way here and they were mostly food and clothing. Here in Canet there are artists, incense burning and political stalls. It’s at the ANC stall that we find Marta. Three political stalls are conjoined effectively in a promising show of unity. Esquerra Repúblicana, Consell per la República and the ANC. Later we would meet the Junts peole along a different street, so I can appreciate the whole unity thing is particularly challenging here at the moment.

The activists at the ANC stall were so welcoming and generous and Marta herself was a fabulous host, taking us on a tour round the old town and up to the Misericordia church, culminating in a barbecue at her home. Fantastic.

I sang a couple of songs at the ANC stall in Canet de Mar – here’s “Dear Catalonia”