Cristina Hodgson
SPAIN’s transport agency, the DGT, has launched a new awareness campaign and special traffic device operation for the supervision of road trips this summer.
In a summer campaign in which 91.2 million road trips are expected to take place nationally and over a million cars expected on Andalucian roads just this weekend, the DGT have stepped up road surveillance with a total of 780 fixed radars (16 more than last year); 12 helicopters; 15 camouflaged vans; and 216 belt and mobile control cameras, ready to monitor Spanish roads this summer.
According to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, this is a ‘very special year,’ because it has been ‘conditioned by a long winter of confinements and restrictions.’
“The recovery in traffic, thanks to the efforts to vaccinate against COVID-19, is being faster than expected,” he said, with latest data from the DGT indicating that displacement figures are already close to those of 2019.
For this reason, the DGT has established four special operations where extra road surveillance will take place on the following dates:
Operation Summer Out (from Friday, July 2 to Sunday, July 4)
August 1 departure (from Friday, July 30 to Sunday, August 1)
August 15 special operation (from Friday, August 13 to Monday August 16)
Return operation (from Friday, August 27 to Sunday, August 29).
Traffic authorities have also recommended that those intending to travel do their best to avoid the busiest times of day, expected to be between 3 and 11 pm on Fridays, 9 am and 2 pm on Saturdays and 7 and 11 pm on Sundays.
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