How to navigate Renfe
 

I am having problems trying to get tickets from Valencia to Granada. I specify one way, the date (Oct. 20) the departure station and the arrival. I know that I need to change in Cordoba (I am choosing one of the two fast routes), but when I try to enter the information, I can get to a calendar to specify the date which is then changed back to Sept. 4. as the default. In any case, I can't get any further because Renfe does not recognize Granada as a valid end point. Can anyone with the Renfe reservation system tell me how to get these tickets? Thanks.

When you punch in the date you wish to travel , click on Accept…( don’t worry about the return date)
Renfe shows both Valencia ( TODAS ) and Granada.
There are 4 trains on Oct 20th. One is not on sale yet.

It worked with no problems this time. Thanks.

you are welcome..enjoy fabulous Spain.

Again I am having problems getting train tickets. I am trying to book two one-way tickets from Cordoba to Seville for October 26. But whether on the Renfe site or the Rome2Rio site, when I try to order the tickets, the date defaults to Sept. 9. In fact, if trying to change the date on the Renfe site by laboriously clicking on the forward arrow next to the departure date, I can't get past Sept 11. I am specifying a one-way ticket, so it is not as if Oct. 26 is given as the return trip.

I just managed to get tickets from Granada to Cordoba. This time Rome2Rio sent me to Omio which did have a service charge of 4€. Which makes me think: do I need to specify "guest" to purchase tickets directly from Renfe without creating an account?

If at first you don't succeed ... I On the general Renfe site I saw a box to check next to US Renfe Office, and everything went smoothly from then on.

I have never tried to buy tickets on Renfe without an account, why do you want to do that? Never heard of Omio. I just tried to book what you wanted and had no problem, they showed me many trains all day long for Oct 26 and didn't change the date. Now I did it in Spanish, but when I checked to see if that was the issue, it did do the same thing in English as you describe, changing the date to 9/8 or something all the time. Then I switched back to SPanish and it did the same thing!

Drives me crazy, it did work at first.

A lot of people use thetrainline.com which also sells their tickets with a small fee. Their fee also appears to be about 4 euro, though. I just have heard of them a lot.

I tried to get back on the Renfe US site with little success until I found a reference to it in one of my print outs. This is the site which worked smoothly for me:

https://spainrail.com/en

There is a booking fee of $6.02€

The change back to default date irritates me too. Then I forget to click accept after seeing the date because the drop down window is sometimes low enough on the screen that the accept button doesn't show.
I think the forward /back arrow only worked within one week.

I created a mas account which gave me 10% discount on first ticket.