Private railway operator Ouigo racks up criticism after train arrives in Malaga in the middle of the night

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Passengers criticise the four-hour delay and the lack of information, while Ouigo cites 'technical incident' revision

Ignacio Lillo

Málaga

Friday, 16 January 2026, 14:54

Private high-speed operator Ouigo faces ongoing criticism for its operations on the Andalusian corridor. The latest incident happened in the early hours of Friday, when a train from Madrid that was scheduled to arrive in Malaga before midnight delayed its departure. In the end, it got to the Costa del Sol capital around 3.30am.

Some of the passengers have contacted SUR to report the serious delay, as well as the lack of information and attention provided by the operator during the incident. A spokesperson for Ouigo said that the delay had been caused by a necessary "revision of a technical incident on the train". Although they did not add further details, technical sources said that this meant that the train had to be taken to the workshop and returned to Atocha once the problem had been solved.

'I will never take an Ouigo train again, no matter how cheap it is'

"I will never take an Ouigo train again, no matter how cheap it is," Jesús, one of the passengers on the train in question, said, adding that his greatest fear was that the train "would stop in the middle of the fields of La Mancha".

In the end, his fears did not materialise, but what was to be a short trip to Malaga did not turn out quite as he had hoped. "They didn't give us any explanation as to what the specific reason was. They just said it was technical. Since it's been happening so much lately, we didn't know what to think," Jesús said.

Uncertainty and neglect

Jesús had just spent a few days with his family in Madrid when he was due to return to Malaga, where he works. He said that he had arrived at Atocha with plenty of time, but he got concerned when he saw that there was a train bound for Barcelona, also delayed.

"There was talk among the passengers that the train to Malaga would also be late." His fears were confirmed shortly afterwards by an Adif worker. "They were already saying that there were problems with the train and that it would be delayed by at least an hour.

"We were told we couldn't go in and to wait outside. The bad thing is that there are no sockets for mobile phones, not even a chair to sit on and the prices at the station's establishments are abusive," Jesús said. From that moment on, passengers were left hanging in front of the information screens until two employees confirmed that there was a technical problem.

"They told us that, in principle, we would not leave until 11.30pm, because they had to send the train to the workshop to fix what had broken and then bring it back again. That was the minimum time it would take, they told us."

Finally, the train left Atocha around 12.30am and arrived at the María Zambrano station three hours later.

Problems keep piling up for Ouigo

This delay comes at a time when Ouigo is already under public scrutiny due to a string of incidents. The most serious was the cancellation of numerous services between Madrid, Malaga and Seville, which left around 15,000 passengers without trains during January and forced state railway operator Renfe to put on additional services to assist passengers.

On top of that, Renfe has had to recover another Ouigo train that had been stuck at Cordoba station for more than a week due to a technical fault. The train is now on its way to the Santa Catalina maintenance depot. This was confirmed by Renfe president Álvaro Fernández Heredia, who attributed the incident to Ouigo's "lack of resources".