The national road N-260 is the only access road to the municipality of Portbou. It is used by supply vehicles, motorhomes or buses, which sometimes causes traffic jams as these heavy vehicles do not have enough room to maneuver due to the narrowness of the road. The expansion of this road has been a constant demand of the last mayors who have passed through the City Council.
A demand that became more evident than ever with the death, in 2013, of a father and daughter who were trapped on this road as a result of the Alt Empordà fires, which ended up with more than 10,000 hectares burned.
Then, hundreds of drivers used the N-260 highway as an alternative route to the AP-7 and the N-II, which were cut off by the fire that originated in La Jonquera, which was soon collapsed.
Another fire on this road caused panic among trapped drivers, who abandoned their cars and ran down the mountain. A father and his daughter died after falling off a cliff while fleeing the fire.
The mayor at the time, Lluís Salas, regretted that there had been no improvement in this narrow and winding stretch, about two kilometers long. It has been a decade for the state to remedy a historic lawsuit.
The Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility has provisionally approved the project to widen the carriageway of the N-260 highway, between the border with France and the municipality of Portbou.
The action will be carried out between kilometer points 0 and 1’650 and has an estimated budget of about 200,000 euros. The section covered by the action runs through very rugged terrain and the road is made up of one lane in each direction with widths of less than three meters, with hardly any shoulder.
The action, as explained by the Ministry of Transport, aims to provide the road with sufficient extra width to allow heavy vehicles, buses and motorhomes to cross without invading the opposite direction at those points where it has been identified that there are currently problems in doing so.
Specifically, action will be taken in two sections in which it is necessary to provide extra width to the N-260 platform and three more sections in which it is necessary to improve the visibility of the road.
The current mayor of Portbou, Gael Rodríguez, was very satisfied with this performance, which was one of the main requests of the City Council. “Since we began our mandate, the State has been addressing our demands and this, which was one of the main ones, has been resolved very quickly,” Rodríguez highlighted.
