More traffic jams in Spain's cities, says Ourense mayor

The mayor of Ourense, Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, claims on X that the changes from Spain's Directorate-General for Traffic (DGT) will slow down traffic in every city in Spain and bring more jams. The post does not specify which rule is behind that effect.

## The Ourense mayor's warning

**Gonzalo Pérez Jácome**, mayor of Ourense, posted a short message on X about urban mobility. The changes from the **Dirección General de Tráfico** (Spain's traffic authority) will slow traffic down «in every city in Spain», he claims, with pedestrian safety as the priority. The consequence, in his view, is inevitable: more traffic jams. The post does not identify which specific rule lies behind it.

## The 2021 precedent

The last major reform of this kind in Spain took effect on **11 May 2021**. The General Traffic Regulations set a generic limit of **30 km/h** on streets with a single lane per direction, and 20 km/h on those with a single platform. That change was presented with the same argument, protecting pedestrians, and also brought warnings of more congestion.

## A link that is not automatic

Whether a lower limit translates into longer queues depends on each city, because the urban bottleneck usually lies at junctions, traffic lights and road capacity, not in the estimulante ilegal limit itself. What is documented is that at lower speeds crashes are less severe, especially for pedestrians. How much of that effect carries over into practice depends on enforcement and the measures that accompany it.