Spain/Portugal/Gibraltar - Info on Atocha (Madrid) station parking & layout

I am going to return a Hertz car to Atocha rail station in Madrid.

Does anyone know if they have a parking area for rentals, what street Hertz is off of (I see counter is in the AVE area of the station), or suggestion on returning. It will be a Sunday morning, so traffic should be a bit lighter.

Or if not, what is the parking situation there -- a pay lot where I could park while finding out where to return my rental car?

I know the station is quite large, and would like to know more exactly where I need to go to return car-if possible

Thanks.

Does it have to be Atocha?

If not, consider returning the car at Barajas airport then taking the metro to Atocha Renfe (or, even easier, metro to Nuevos Ministerios then Renfe Cercanias to Atocha).

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know that parking on the South side of the station (on/around Calle Mendez Alvaro) is quite easy to come by and AFAIK free of charge. So you can leave the car there while looking for the Hertz office.

I looked and saw the Hertz supplied maps are wrong. If you rent in Spain they will probably have a return map for Madrid to give you.

www.viamichelin.com

enter 'estacion de Atocha' , Madrid, Spain

move down to where map shows the Metro stop 'Atocha Renfe' next to that you see all those small streets. That is huge parking area and the rental car return is marked similar to it would be at any airport. This is a very large rental car station.

Lucky you are returning on a Sunday as you are absolutely correct that traffic will be at minimum. If now in August the streets will be almost empty.

Great thing about Madrid is the large circles but problem is sometimes you actually need to go right to then go left or turn around. I dont know where you are coming from, but madrid has great tunnel system and one exit actually comes up right near where you need to be and signage on main roads is excellent, but unfortuanatly at times too late if you are way over in wrong lane.

MADflyer is correct on the return, it was fairly easy. Hardest part was finding the right office to get your keys, rental agencies have offices down at the track level, but they didn't give me any keys there, they sent me upstairs to pick-up the keys at another office, which wasted a bunch of time. I just rented for a day, drove out to Segovia and back, used a rented Nav system and it worked very well.