The highway that passes through the Guadalhorce Valley and the Serranía de Ronda has been making little progress for more than a decade. And it is a shame, because it is an infrastructure that aims to alleviate all the traffic on the Málaga-Campillos-Ronda axis. The good thing is that there is beginning to be movement in the project. In fact, there are already contracts awarded and works that, if nothing happens, should begin this year.
A half highway. The A-357, known as the Guadalhorce highway, connects Malaga capital with the Guadalhorce Valley and the interior of the province. It has 69 kilometers in total, but it is only a highway until Casapalma. From there, the conventional road has to support the more than 25,000 vehicles per day, although in the sections closest to Malaga the peaks reach 80,000.
It is the only entrance to the capital for municipalities such as Álora, Pizarra or Cártama, and also the most direct access to Ronda for thousands of tourists and residents.
Awarded in 2010, but never built. The first pending section, between the Casapalma and Cerralba interchanges (just 4.2 kilometers), was awarded for the first time in January 2010. The works, however, never began. The contract was paralyzed since then, and from the Junta de Andalucía they counted that the administration had to end up resolving it a decade later with an additional financial cost of half a million euros.
The project had also become technically obsolete: since when it was restarted they had to invest money and effort in repeating the environmental procedure and updating all the documentation from practically scratch.
The offers arrive. In February 2024, the Ministry of Development reactivated the project and in the summer of that same year the Government Council authorized the expense. In July 2025, The works were tendered for 56.9 million euros with an execution period of 46 months. At that time, 22 proposals were presented, most of them in the form of a UTE (temporary union of companies), with some of the largest construction groups in the country such as Acciona, Ferrovial, Dragados, Sacyr or FCC, among others.
The UTE of Copisa Constructora Pirenaica and Arpo was the one who took the lead. According to Diario Surthey offered to do the work for 41.6 million, almost 15 million less than the bidding budget.
What exactly is going to be built. The new section runs largely parallel to the current road, which will be maintained as a service road for local access. The new infrastructure will have a dual carriageway with two 3.5 meter lanes in each direction, shoulders and a ten meter median. It will also have a 250-meter viaduct to cross the Rio Grande. The section ends by connecting with the current highway in Pizarra through a roundabout, leaving the junction ready for the next phase.
And now what. The works should start in the coming months. But this section is just the beginning. The Board has two other projects in the drafting phase that total eight more kilometers: the Cerralba-Zalea section and the duplication of the accesses to Ronda on the A-367, both awarded for design in January 2025, according to account South Journal. Beyond that, the more than 70 remaining kilometers to Ronda remain without a date or definitive route, and several groups have been asking for a clearer commitment for years. We’ll see how everything turns out.
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