Spanish HSR may well be overbuilt and go to places that cannot provide the needed volume, but from the passenger and engineering perspective it is impressive. I rode the HSR from Madrid to Malaga a year or so ago and was struck by the parallels in topography, agriculture and population density between at least that part of Spain and the proposed California HSR route. So, to take people from Fresno to Spain to show what somebody else did in similar circumstances makes sense.