Each holiday period, especially, summer, the Guardia Civil traffic police and emergency services go on alert on the first days, when everybody is on the road.

These special periods are known as Operación Salida or in the case of massive return flow when vacations end, Operación Retorno.

Operación Salida de Julio started on the 30th of June at 00.01h and concluded at 23.59 Sunday night during which the Emergency, Call Centre, 112 dealt with 8,808 call outs, half of which were calls for medical assistance (4,409).

This was followed by calls concerning citizen safety; i.e., crime, numbering 1,576 calls and then traffic accidents (758 calls).

Carrying on in descending order are the ones concerning animals (500) and fires (452). At the bottom end are rescues and basic service anomalies.

Logically, it was Saturday the 2nd and Sunday the 3rd when most calls were registered, numbering 2,581 and 2,566 respectively. As for the busiest time of the day, it was between 21.00h and 22.00h when there were 159 calls in just that one hour; that’s 2.65 a minute

As to which provinces were the most problematic, Málaga came first with 2,094 call outs, Sevilla, 2,052, Cádiz 1,168 and Granada with 1,120 calls. At the opposite end of the scale were Almería with 653, Córdoba with 598, Huelva with 585 and Jaén with 538.

(News: Andalucia)