News
Madrid faces nine decisive months to complete its major urban works
Madrid opens this Tuesday the last full political term before the municipal elections of 23 May 2027, with three major urban transformations at a decisive stage. The burying of the A-5, Parque Castellana and the M-30 covering at Ventas will progress in the coming months, while the City Council progressively reduces some of the diversions and closures that have affected the city’s mobility.
José Luis Martínez-Almeida is bringing together his Government team in the pavilion in the Cecilio Rodríguez gardens in El Retiro to begin a term that will be marked by the timetable for these works. The PP enters this final stage of the term with an absolute majority and the stated aim of completing its programme before standing for election again.
The A-5 will be one of the first projects to reach a visible milestone. Excavation of the two tunnels between Padre Piquer and Avenida de Portugal has already finished and the civil works must be completed in September. The City Council maintains its forecast of opening the underground section to traffic at the end of 2026.
That will not mean the Paseo Verde del Suroeste is finished. Surface urbanisation works begin now and have a much longer timetable: the linear park above the current A-5, with more than 7,000 new trees and new pedestrian and cycling routes between Latina and Moncloa-Aravaca, is planned for early 2028.
In the north, Parque Castellana also has December marked in red. Excavation of the 675-metre tunnel between Sinesio Delgado and Nudo Norte finished in July and work is now concentrated on installations, finishes and surface urbanisation. The new underground route is due to enter service before the end of the year, while a park of around 70,000 square metres is being built above it next to the Cinco Torres and La Paz.
The timetable is different in Ventas. The bulk of the works affecting M-30 traffic has already finished and the next restrictions will mainly be at night, but Parque Ventas will not be finished before the end of the year. The work, which will cover 197 metres of the ring road and connect Salamanca and Ciudad Lineal through a green space of 16,370 square metres, remains scheduled for completion in spring 2027.
The final stretch of the works coincides with an electoral landscape that is more defined than it was at the start of summer. Rita Maestre won Más Madrid's primaries in July and will again stand as its City Council candidate in 2027. A few days later, Reyes Maroto prevailed over Enma López in the Socialist primaries and will again lead the PSOE in the capital.
Marta Higueras, first deputy mayor during Manuela Carmena's term, has joined those candidacies, having created Independientes por Madrid to contest the municipal elections with an exclusively municipal project. Vox, meanwhile, starts the new term with only two of its original five councillors in the group: Javier Ortega Smith, Carla Toscano and Ignacio Ansaldo have formally become non-attached councillors following their expulsion from the party.
For those travelling around Madrid, the most immediate effect of this new term will not be in the candidacies, but in the works timetable. During September, disruptions on the A-5, Alcalá and other points in the city will be removed; in December, the A-5 and Parque Castellana tunnels should open; and in spring 2027, the next major milestone will come with the planned completion of Parque Ventas, just a few weeks before the municipal elections.