A court n Madrid has ordered 11 members of an ‘uncontrollable’ stag party (in Spanish ‘despedida de soltero’) to pay a total of €7,676 to Spain’s national train operator, RENFE, after their refusal to leave an AVE train resulted in it arriving in Málaga (Andalusia) 23 minutes later than scheduled.
After the train arrived late, the state-owned railway operator RENFE had to pay 216 passengers a total of €7,676 in compensation.
RENFE said the young men disrupted a train travelling from Madrid to Málaga on 6 July 2018 by ‘screaming, singing and banging on the walls’ of the train’s bar. Some passengers said at the time that the noise being made could be heard three carriages away.
When the train made a scheduled stop in the city of Córdoba, the group — which ‘behaved uncontrollably’ — refused to leave the train as requested by staff, who then called the police to have them removed, it added in a statement.
In Córdoba, where the train paused for 15 minutes, ‘the defendants took the opportunity to definitively escalate their private party in the train cafeteria, where they were drinking, dancing, singing and yelling at each other, full volume and in a totally uncontrolled way’, the statement said.
After having to compensate 216 other passengers nearly €8,000, RENFE filed a lawsuit against the 11 stag party members to demand they reimburse the same amount and a Madrid court agreed, with each man ordered to pay €697.82, the statement said.
RENFE said it was ‘aware’ that there has been an increase in recent years in such events on its high-speed trains and would continue to turn to the courts and police whenever ‘public order’ is disrupted.
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