Spain's highways built at 2 km a year: why roadworks drag on forever

Highways at two kilometres a year: construction no longer moves fast

A highway section that began in early 2023 is still, at this point, moving earth and preparing overpasses on minor roads. It is the extension of the A-58 between Cáceres and Badajoz, flat terrain with hardly any vegetation, and some point to 2029 before it enters service, although the ministry itself won't confirm it. Do the maths: it works out at two kilometres of highway per year. In the nineties, and up until the bubble burst, a section was wrapped up in two or three years. Today the same job is measured in decades.

The question is not why there are fewer cranes. It is why, with less money, the little that gets done advances at a snail's pace.

From the construction boom to turtle highways

The turning point has a date and a name: the 2010 hammer blow to infrastructure investment, from which Spain has never recovered. That produced what is known in the jargon as turtle highways, projects that drag on for decades for ridiculously short sections. Some have seen the light of day, such as the A-22 or the A-54, the latter about to open its final section after starting in 1999. Others remain in limbo sine die: A-12, A-11, A-21, A-23, A-15, A-32, A-58, A-73.

The pattern repeats itself. Work starts, stops, resumes in a trickle, and the budget is split into annual instalments that never stretch far enough to finish. Meanwhile, the cost of keeping the site open —expropriations, maintaining diversions, price revisions— eats up what was saved in the first place.

The solution that was already tried: tolls and two years

There is a counterexample that demolishes the technical-complexity excuse. The A-66 between Zamora and Benavente, some 70 kilometres, was completed in 2015 in barely two years through a toll concession, shadow or direct. The method worked where the public budget got stuck. The obvious question is why it isn't replicated: because tolls carry a political cost, and because a concession forces deadlines that then have to be met.

The argument that there's no money for anything serious falls short. What's missing is a mechanism that penalises delay. A public project without a rigid contractual deadline is one that can be stretched out until the political cycle changes.

Too many highways or not enough maintenance?

Here the analysis splits. Some argue that almost everything that was needed has been built, and that the priority now is maintaining what exists, not opening new fronts. In Galicia, for example, it is pointed out that there is surplus capacity: Santiago is connected to the whole region, and there are sections, such as Lugo-Ourense, where real traffic is concentrated around the city itself. The Santiago-Lugo highway, under way since 1999, is the textbook example of a project nobody is quite sure was worth it.

On the other side weighs an ironclad argument: if the money had gone into a 200 km/h network for passengers and freight instead of High-Estimulante ilegal Rail, the country would have a superb grid at a fraction of the cost. The highway, at least, is used by the people who live there.

The SE-40 and the merry-go-round of paperwork

For never-ending construction, there's the SE-40. It links two provinces cut off by rail and poorly served by roads, Cádiz and Huelva, and has been delayed for years. Whenever a construction solution seems within reach —a super-bridge or tunnels under the Guadalquivir— opponents appear and the merry-go-round of objections starts again. The existing bridge, the Puente del Paquito, filled up with debris when a site cabin fell from a crane, and is now being repaired to avoid legal proceedings. Quite a symbol.

The result is that the money goes on studies, reports and route corrections, not on concrete. And meanwhile, the A-54 between Santiago and Lugo has been waiting since 1999.

The question left hanging is not how much a highway costs, but how much it costs to leave it half-built for twenty years.