Highways in Spain
Wikimedia list article
The Spanish motorway (highway) network is the third largest in the world, by length. As of 2025, there are 17,228 km (10,705 mi) of High Capacity Roads (Spanish: Vías de Gran Capacidad) in the country. There are two main types of such roads, autopistas and autovías, which differed in the strictness of the standards they are held to.
History
Between 1990 and 2012 Spain had one of the highest rates of motorway growth in Europe.
The first motorways named autopista were financed using sovereign debt.
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. Between 1987 and 1990, the operations at four new motorways were transferred to private companies, three by the Catalan region and one by the national government.
Building of new sections of autovia was increased before the 1992 Olympic Games and the Sevilla World Fair.
The 1984-1992 National Plan built around 3500 kilometers of new autovia, to reach a network length of 6000 kilometres by 1992, at a cost of 184 million pesetas (around 1 million euros). At the same time, the new autovia standard was closer to the autopista standard, as the old autovia standard was understood as not providing enough safety.
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This entry incorporates text from “Highways in Spain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.