Highways in Spain
As of 2025[update], there are 17,228 km (10,705 mi) of High Capacity Roads[1][2] (Spanish: Vías de Gran Capacidad) in the country.
[4] At the end of the 1980s, and before Olympic Games in 1992 in Barcelona, the autonomous Catalan government was interested in increasing the speed limit on new motorways.
In general, slow vehicles like bicycles and agricultural machinery are allowed under certain restrictions so as to not disrupt the traffic excessively or cause any danger.
However, in 2003 all Spanish motorways were uniformly renamed with the following criteria: All such names are posted in white letters on blue background, like: A-49 or AP-4 .
The roads listed below form the backbone of the Spanish high capacity network, connecting all provincial capitals and other major towns and destinations.
Until recently, the network suffered from a high radiality, which collapsed[clarification needed] the several Madrid beltways and the roads into the city and region.
Since the 2000s, an effort to improve the situation was made based on two actions: *: under construction †: planned Fraga — AP-2 — Lleida (A-22, LL-11) — Cervera (C-25) — Martorell (AP-7) — B-23 — L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (B-10) Tordera (C-32) — * — Caldes de Malavella — Fornells de la Selva — † — Girona — † — Figueres — † — France Southern span: La Robla (N-630) — † — León (AP-66/AP-71, A-231) — Benavente (A-52/A-6) — Zamora (A-11) — Salamanca (A-62) — Plasencia (EX-A1) — Cáceres — Mérida (A-5) — Seville (SE-30) [citation needed] Most beltways, full or partial, have originated from the upgrading of one or several roads reaching the town to the autovía level, as the several variantes looping around the town were joined in a single beltway that received a new naming such as TO-20 or Z-40.
The list below only contains roads that are recognized as autovías or autopistas for at least part of its length, thus disqualifying urban arteries with at-grade intersections or unrestricted direct access to the main lanes, which are better represented by the dual carriageway concept.
Since then, several of those roads have been upgraded to motorway level in order to ensure the internal vertebration of the region, or to provide alternative high-capacity routes to those managed by the national government when those were inadequate or saturated.
There are no special codes for identifying highways: upgraded roads usually keep their name and sign color (orange, green or yellow).
However, confusion sometimes arises due to the fact that most regional roads start with the letter A (for Andalucía), which is also used by the national government for highways.
Vertebral Asturian motorways have identifiers in the style of national ones, that is, white text on blue background, while roads in process of upgrading keep their old nomenclature until the full route is completed.
In the flat La Mancha, relief does not usually require costly tunnels and bridges, though the region does contain several nature reserves including the Tablas de Daimiel National Park wetlands.
Borox — * — Añover de Tajo *: in construction — †: planned The largest community in Spain by land area, Castile and León has a dense road network, but until recently most of its highways had been part of the national system.
*: in construction — †: planned The only community without a high-capacity network of its own, Cantabria is severely held back in such a development by a highly mountainous terrain that multiplies the cost of building any kind of expressway.
The second most populated community in Spain, Catalonia has a thorough regional road network, with several highways managed by the Generalitat de Catalunya.
However, the fact that its northern and north-eastern borders are blocked by mountain ranges with typical elevations of 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) over the main mesa, combined with the mentioned demographics of the territory (Extremadura ranks the 5th community in Spain by land area, but only the 12th by population, and none of its cities reach 200,000 inhabitants) has traditionally limited the penetration of even the national highway network.
*: in construction — †: planned Often compared to Scotland because of its orographic similarities, Galicia is a hilly but not mountainous region with an approximate population of 3M people.
Usually, the upgrade of long roads, twinned or not, to the motorway level is not undertaken at once, so the list below only contains the itinerary for the spans that actually run as highways or have been planned to.
Eastern stretch: R-4 — Pinto (A-4) — M-423 — Warner Madrid Theme Park — † — San Martín de la Vega — † — Arganda del Rey (A-3/M-300) *: in construction — †: planned The coastal region of Murcia is an important touristic destination in Spain.
Its nearly 1.5 million inhabitants are mainly concentrated in the eastern part of the community, from Murcia city to the coast, while inland zones of Yecla, Jumilla and Caravaca de la Cruz are more sparsely populated.
It is thus the goal of the regional government to provide alternative highway corridors that connect the inland border of Murcia to the coastal zones.
The regional highway CV-10 is currently being expanded to the boundary with Catalonia and will be transferred to the national Government as a new stretch of the A-7 (Autovía del Mediterráneo).
