Roads

🛣️ Roads

Spain's 165,832 km of intercity roads, by who pays for and maintains them: the State, the regional governments or the provincial councils (including the Basque provincial councils, the Canary island councils (cabildos) and the Balearic island councils (consells)), and which ones are toll motorways, free motorways or ordinary roads. Plus how many vehicles use each section of the State network every day.

The map

State network: official catalogue of the Ministry of Transport (2025). Regional governments, provincial councils, Canary island councils and Balearic island councils: OpenStreetMap, with ownership inferred from each road's code (CL- for the Junta de Castilla y León, BV- for the Diputació de Barcelona, DP- for a Galician provincial council...) and tolls marked on the map; a few individual roads may be wrong. In the Basque Country all roads, including the A-8 and AP-8, belong to the provincial councils (diputaciones forales), and in Navarre to the regional government. Streets and the roads run by town councils are not included (about 360,000 km more, carrying 10 % of the traffic).

The State runs only 16 % of the km, but almost all the motorways and dual carriageways, which carry half of the traffic. The regional governments have 43 % and the provincial and island councils 41 %, almost all of it conventional roads.

The ones you pay for

Km of toll road from the State catalogue and, for the rest, measured on OpenStreetMap (approximate: sometimes both carriageways or the junctions are counted). The State motorways whose concessions expired between 2018 and 2021 (AP-1, AP-4, the AP-7 from La Jonquera to Alicante and the AP-2) became free dual carriageways; the AP-6, AP-9, AP-68 and the Madrid radial motorways, among others, are still tolled. The Basque ones (AP-1, AP-8), the AP-15 in Navarre and the Generalitat ones (C-16, C-32) and the Xunta ones (AG-55, AG-57) charge tolls through their governments or concessionaires.

The first motorways (1970s) were toll roads; since the 1980s almost everything built has been free dual carriageways. Toll roads fell from about 3,000 km in 2017 to under 2,000 when the concessions of the big State motorways ended. Until 1985 the series gives data every five years, and until 1990 it does not count the roads of the provincial councils.

How many vehicles use each section

Average daily traffic (IMD): vehicles using the road on an average day of the year, both directions added together, measured by the Ministry's counting stations on the State road network. Thicker line = more vehicles. The regional governments and provincial councils publish their own counts separately (or not at all), so their roads do not appear; according to the Ministry, the State network carries 53 % of all traffic and 66 % of truck traffic.

The sections with the most traffic

By province

Km from the Statistical Yearbook of the Ministry of Transport (regional governments and provincial councils report their data a year late). By area, the densest networks are in Galicia (Pontevedra, Lugo, A Coruña), with a very dense provincial-council network serving thousands of small villages, in Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Tenerife. Per inhabitant, the big empty provinces lead (Soria, Teruel, Cuenca, Zamora), where there are many roads for very few people.

How it has grown since 1970

In 1984 the State transferred a large part of its network to the regional governments, which is why it drops from about 80,000 km to 20,000. The provincial councils' roads are only counted from 1990. Since then the total has barely changed (about 165,000 km); what grows is the motorways.

Compared with Europe

Motorways: Spain 32.5 EU 17.1 (2023)France 17.1Portugal 27.6Germany 15.9 (2023)Italy 12.8 (2023) km per 100,000 inhabitants · 2024 · Eurostat (road_if_motorwa y demo_gind) All countries →

Spain has the longest network of motorways and dual carriageways in the EU and one of the longest per inhabitant. By area it is about average: the country is large and sparsely populated inland. Eurostat counts dual carriageways as motorways too; the latest year published varies by country.

Sources and notes

• Km by ownership and type of road: Statistical Yearbook of the Ministry of Transport, via the Transport and Logistics Observatory (OTLE): by province since 2012 and for all of Spain since 1970. The provincial councils include the Basque ones (diputaciones forales), the Canary island councils (cabildos) and the Balearic island councils (consells).
• State network: Catalogue of the State Road Network (Ministry of Transport), with the type of each section and whether it is tolled.
• Networks of the regional governments, provincial councils and island councils: OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL licence), roads with a code downloaded through the Overpass API. Ownership is inferred from the road code; the official km are those of the Yearbook.
• Traffic: IMD by section of the State network from the Ministry of Transport's Hermes viewer (traffic map; latest year published for each road).
• Eurostat: km of motorways by country (road_if_motorwa), population and area.

Data updated 7 minutes ago