The fun here is that for practical purposes the AJC only applies if you are under the same contract of carriage from start to finish—something that is rarely the case and doesn't apply to me at all this time.
Similarly, HOTNAT (Hop On The Next Available Train) is only applicable to Railteam members when another Railteam member caused the problem. Renfe is not a Railteam member, and I perceived this to be the most likely source of problems for this trip.
Amusingly enough, both SNCF and Eurostar are Railteam members, so if I now arrive at Lille too late to catch my Eurostar, then I can legitimately claim rights under HOTNAT. I still hope I don't need to.
As it is, the whole situation of rights is a mess, and I’ve already had to spend 22€ extra and take a class reduction as a result of the worries that I could not make it out of Spain in time. This has cost me real money, and potentially time with my family. As much as companies want to disagree, intangible losses are still losses.
The European Commission has been getting increasingly annoyed about this issue, and has been working on changing it. They will be proposing new legislation in Spring—provisionally titled the Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation (#SDBTR)—which will commence the long, slow EU legislative process to set a framework for passenger rights.
And this is where @erpu come in. The European Rail Passengers Union is the brainchild of @jon, @redjives, @partim and @patrick, an association for campaigning for cross-border passengers rights. It's currently in its early days and being established, but this proposed legislation is very much going to be one of the cornerstones of the association. I have joined it as far as I am able to for the moment, and I want to actively participate in it.
The main thrust of the position here is that passenger rights should apply to all journeys, including ones involving multiple contracts of carriage.
