Concession contracts for the principal toll roads in Spain will start to expire in the next five years and, according to local press, the main political parties (PP and PSOE) are not expected to renew them.
Two deals, Ap-1 owned by Itinere and Ap-7 principal asset of Abertis, are due to expire between 2018 and 2019. National elections will take place in December, but whoever wins it is expected that they will not look to renew these deals.
The main firms in Spain have insisted that ending tolls on roads is the opposite of what governments are doing abroad. However, in the last three years eight Spanish concessionaries became bankrupt. The latest of these emerged only last week, when OHL declare its subsidiaries in charge of the M-12 toll road, Aeropistas and Eje Aeropuerto (M-12), in liquidation with a debt of €557.7m.
In 2012, justice minister, Rafael Catala, proposed to transfer the cost of the highways to general taxation.