The trains in Spain are driving me insane

I'm trying to get some train tickets for people who are in Spain. But so far, our travel agent can't issue them because they're already in Spain, and they can only do paper tickets. I can't do them because the website won't work without identification numbers that, as far as we can tell, Americans don't have (our people can't do them themselves for the same reason). The people our people are visiting can't do them because they're travelling. Now I'm trying to get their hosts' Spanish travel agent to call me back (which of course isn't happening today, because it's rather late over there). Gah! Five train tickets! How hard should this really be?