Santander, Jan 11 (EFECOM).- Motorists heading to Santander from Palencia on the N-611 will stop traveling within a month through one of the most conflictive sections of the State highways, the winding Hoces de Bárcena, to ‘fly’ at a height of 145 meters over the highest bridge in Spain: the Montabliz viaduct.
The company selected by the Ministry of Development for the work, Ferrovial, yesterday finished the construction of a 705-meter-long bridge that experts present as an engineering feat, since “all its figures are record”, as explained today the Government delegate in Cantabria, Agustín Ibáñez.
The Montabliz viaduct is the tallest ever built in Spain, at 145 meters high, which means that skyscrapers such as the Picasso tower in Madrid, which is only 12 meters taller, or the Mapfre tower in Barcelona, which outnumbers him by nine.
It is also the sixth highest in Europe. “Only a handful of viaducts, such as the French one at Millau or the Austrian one at Eropabrücke, exceed the figures for Montabliz,” says Ferrovial on its website.
This bridge of the Cantabria-La Meseta Highway (A-67), which has cost 26 million euros, also holds another record: it has the widest span in Spain, since between its two central pilasters there are 175 meters of separation, the equivalent to two football fields.
The magnitude of this viaduct over the Bisueña river valley is largely a consequence of the conditions imposed by the environmental impact statement to damage as little as possible the natural and landscape values of the surroundings of the town of Montabliz, as recalled today by the delegate of the Government.
These conditions established that the bridge had only four pilasters to save its 705 meters in length and that the five lanes that make up the highway at that point (three going up and two going down) ran on a single deck.
To build its pilasters, a “self-climbing system unprecedented in Spain until now” was also developed, says Ferrovial.
The Montabliz viaduct is the most spectacular infrastructure of a section of highway (Molledo-Pesquera) that has turned out to be one of the most expensive built to date in Spain, since it has cost 162 million euros, 13.7 million per kilometer.
The Government Delegation announced today that the section will be put into service within a maximum period of one month, although it will not be formally inaugurated, since President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has promised on several occasions not to convene this type of institutional act in election period.
However, he is expected to organize an “informative” event, Ibáñez added, specifying that he cannot confirm or deny that Rodríguez Zapatero is going to visit the work, as announced this week by the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla. EFECOM
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