Spain is rightly proud of the AVE, a project devised as a symbol of national engineering prowess and connectivity, started from scratch in the late 1980s to be ready for the 1992 Seville Expo, when Japan and France already had hundreds of kilometres of high-speed track in operation. Spain now has the biggest network in the world after China - which obviously has the advantage of massive territory and a totalitarian government in racking up points - and exports the technology to other countries.

A real success story, and a bloody brilliant train service.