Over 470 personnel and 160 road-maintenance vehicles will keep Andalusian roads free of snow & ice this winter, announced the Junta de Andalucía.

The regional MP for this department, Marifrán Carazo, gave a presentation in Guadix of the Junta’s Plan de Vialidad Invernal for the Andalusian road network, which came online last month and will remain operative until March.

Although there are eight provinces within Andalucía, five of them require special attention during the winter: Almería, Córdoba, Granada, Jaén and Málaga, mainly because of their mountainous hinterlands.

Marifrán Carazo praised her own party’s funding of road conservation and safety, saying that the budget had returned to the pre-crisis levels of 2008 consisting of over 200m euros.

Andalucía counts on 44 snowploughs, 18 JCBs, five tractors, nine lorries and 75 other vehicles (cars & vans), some of which have 4×4 capacity. The region also has a stock of 6,150 tones of salt.

Granada has 668 kilometres of roads at an altitude of 1,000 metres, thus susceptible to snow and ice. There are also 66 kilometres of road at a height of 1,500m above sea level, too – the Puerto de la Mora and La Ragua mountain passes, for example.

(News: Andalucia)