Spain invested 1,910 million euros in road conservation. It is the highest figure in history, according to The Voice of Galiciaand is clearly insufficient for experts. Because the question is not so much how much money Spain is spending on repairing its roads as what can be done with that money.
And the answer is clear: little.
1,910 million euros. It is the data that provides The Voice of Galicia. According to the media, it is the figure that the Government has allocated to repair roads in 2025. The figure is the highest in history and not only in absolute terms. 2009 was the year that came closest to it but it remained at 1,330.3 million euros. Even applying the corresponding inflation at this time, the investment was lower as it is equivalent to about 1,819 million updated to 2025.
Except for the period from 2008 to 2010, Spain had not exceeded 1,000 million euros in highway maintenance until 2021. From that year on, the figure skyrocketed and grew to the aforementioned 1,910.6 million euros last year. Experts point out that it is insufficient.
More money, less miles. The fact that more money has been invested does not have an impact on an improvement in conservation. And the Galician newspaper points out that the price of asphalt has skyrocketed by 25% since 2019. This has caused covering a kilometer of road with a single layer of asphalt to now cost 50,000 euros, when before the pandemic it cost 42,000 euros.
Always talking about patches, superficial repairs. To make a structural repair, as the roads affected by this winter’s harsh storms may now need, the repair is doubled since two layers of asphalt must be applied. That is to say, a kilometer of new paving now costs 100,000 euros when before it was around 84,000 euros.
The accounts are clear. For Juan José Potti, president of the Spanish Association of Asphalt Mixture Manufacturers (Asefma)the same budget yields less. As the same salary pays less when shopping in recent years.
Deficit. According to Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport, Spain is carrying the deficit in investments that the country stopped making after the 2008 crisis. In January, before the rains that would worsen potholes and sinkholes, from the ministry they already pointed out that the new action plan was intended to alleviate the low investments of the previous decade. According to their accountsthe country has a deficit of 5.6 billion euros.
The latest plan presented speaks of investing 1,629 million and an execution horizon of three years. A project that, yes, only affects 26,000 kilometers of state ownership. It is 16% of Spanish roads on which 53.5% of total traffic and 65.7% of heavy traffic accumulate. “If there is a road maintenance problem it depends 16% on the Government and 84% on the rest of the Administrations,” Puente defended himself in Congress a few days ago.
Insufficient. For the associations that study the problem, the investment is clearly insufficient. The Spanish Road Association (AEC) I already pointed out last year that the roads of our country are “at the worst moment in their history” and they already pointed out then that 13,491 million euros are needed, of which 4,721 million euros would fall on the roof of the State and 8,770 million euros on the 75,300 km managed by the regional and regional governments.
But the biggest headache that experts warn about is the inflation that has been experienced in recent years. The same money is used to repair fewer kilometers of road. Puente pointed out in his speech in Congress that “some experts estimate the necessary expenditure on road maintenance at 38,000 euros per kilometer.” However, Asefma assures that a single layer of asphalt requires the aforementioned 50,000 euros.
Not just money. And this same association also ensures that asphalt production is also too low. According to their calculations, in 2025, 9.2% less of this material will be produced, about 18.6 million tons. But they believe that Spain should reach 32.5 million tons of this mixture annually if it wants to repair all the roads that need it.
The productive deficit in recent years is, according to Asefma, 225 million tons since 2011. For its president, it is only possible to cover Spanish needs if it is compensated with 30 million more tons each year than what is currently produced.
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