If you are a worker or student in Madrid and your family lives in Guareña, a town of 7000 inhabitants of the extreme fertile valleys, get ready for the odyssey. You can take one of the most expensive buses in Spain to get to Merida after 4 and a half hours of tight legs and Wifi that never works. Then uncross your legs and cross your fingers: you have to pray that there is a short-distance bus that leaves you in your town, if it exists, to put you at home after 6, 7 or 8 hours of travel between the road and waiting.
You also have the train: wooden tracks from the 19th century for the 57 kilometer hour of ‘high speed’ until disembarking in a closed station, in the middle of the field, without a cafeteria or an information point. 4 hours and 35 minutes with transfer in Puertollano, as long as you are lucky with breakdowns, of course. On July 13, a wagon burned 30 kilometers from Madrid and on Friday, August 11, three damaged trains were registered on the same day.
Going home in Extremadura is expensive, slow and uncomfortable and migrant workers and students know it. The main causes are, broadly speaking, the lack of infrastructure, a disastrous railway system and a bus network that does not provide an affordable offer for those who live in towns, more than three quarters of the population.
Getting to Tenerife is easier
Leaving the same meeting point in Madrid, two students return home to spend a vacation with their family. The first, from Mérida, capital of the Autonomous Community, will take 4 hours and 35 minutes to arrive by bus, the fastest way by professional transport. The other, from Tenerife, will take 2 hours and 50 minutes to reach the island, around three and a half hours considering those at the airport. As for prices, the Extremaduran pays more per kilometer traveled: the man from Emeritus will pay 56,70 euros for his bus round trip for a route of 343 kilometers; for its part, the canary can get to go and go home for 118 at a distance of 1700 kilometers.
