The Ronda-San Pedro road to remain closed until August: what happens now?

There is now a ruling on how long the A-397 road between Ronda and San Pedro Alcántara will be closed for major repairs. It was already known that the damage following the landslide of a steep bank over a bridge within the municipal border of Benahavís was very serious, but until now there were no estimates as to how long those repairs would take. That was until this Thursday's visit to the affected area by Rocío Díaz as regional minister of public works.

The repairs will be carried out under an emergency contract, as agreed a few hours after the visit, but they cannot begin until the heavy rains have subsided as these are still affecting the area at the end of this working week due to the effect of Storm Konrad. Work is therefore expected to start at the end of next week, or later, depending on weather conditions.

From then on it will take about four and a half months to be able to open one lane, so two-way traffic will be able to drive through with some controls in place. With these estimates, we will have to wait until August to be able to use this road again, albeit still with some complications.

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Subsequently, work will continue until both lanes are fully restored as the total duration of the repairs has been estimated at around six months. So, free-moving, two-way traffic will not be restored until at least the end of September or beginning of October.

According to Díaz, this lengthy timeline is due to two factors: the first is that the bank is still going to continue to experience landslides due to the heavy rainfall in the Serranía. The second is that the structure of the viaduct where the rocks landed is damaged, so it needs to be reinforced. The regional minister will soon inform all the mayors in the affected area. She also made a commitment to ensure the work is carried out as quickly as possible, although this will depend on the weather conditions of this March, which has been an especially wet month.