Grassroots groups celebrate as highway tolls lifted after 50 years

Grassroots groups across Catalonia celebrated the end of tolls in four major highways on Tuesday night, a milestone after decades of protests.

In Vilassar de Dalt, a seaside town north of Barcelona, local activists called a demonstration to bid farewell to the oldest toll in Catalonia and Spain, in operation for 52 years.

With Spain having the most extensive high-capacity road network in Europe, stretching over 12,000 km, Catalonia has long been the territory with the highest number of toll highways, over half of its 1,719 kilometer-network.

Following years of protests, Catalan and Spanish authorities decided to terminate toll concessions in four major roads, accounting for 556 kilometers: the AP-2 and AP-7 motorways—connecting Barcelona with the capitals of Girona, Tarragona and Lleida, as well as Spain’s Aragon region and France—and also the C-33 and C-32 highways, north of the Catalan capital.

From Wednesday, the number of kilometers of toll-free roads in Catalonia will surpass those of toll motorways for the first time in decades.

The dilemma of tolls

But the end of tolls poses an uneasy dilemma to authorities, as the Catalan government estimates that it will have to pay 170 million euros over the coming five years to maintain the toll-free highways.

Last May, the Spanish government unveiled plans to turn all public-managed highways into toll roads in 2024, as agreed with EU authorities, who demand that drivers pay for the use of roads and compensate for traffic pollution.