Opened on 28 February 2004, the Andalucia Bridge carries road traffic across the Guadalquivir as it runs through the western edge of Cordoba. It forms part of the first stretch of the city's western ring road, the Ronda de Poniente, linking the La Torrecilla industrial estate with the road to the airport. The crossing was designed by the engineer Javier Manterola, a winner of Spain's national engineering prize, working with Antonio Martinez Cutillas and Javier Munoz Rojas. It was the first cable-stayed bridge of its type that Manterola built in Spain, which contributed to a complex and repeatedly delayed construction. The structure is around 210 metres long over the river, followed by a viaduct of roughly another 200 metres on the right bank that connects to the ring road. A single tall pylon supports the deck through arrays of stay cables, giving the bridge its distinctive profile against the flat river landscape. Much of the difficulty in building it came from the decision to cast the entire structure in place rather than using prefabricated sections, an approach described at the time as almost handmade. The deck is wide enough for six lanes, three in each direction. The bridge handles a heavy traffic load, in the region of 40,000 vehicles a day, and since 2008 it has connected directly to the A-4 motorway, making it one of the main routes in and out of the city on its western side. It sits well away from the historic centre and its famous Roman bridge, serving a practical rather than a tourist function, but it has become a recognised modern feature on the river. Its slender pylon is visible from some distance along the water. The Guadalquivir is crossed by several bridges as it passes the city, and the Andalucia Bridge is among the newest, built to relieve pressure on the older crossings closer to the centre. Upstream stands the San Rafael Bridge and downstream the Abbas Ibn Firnas Bridge. Together these crossings trace the city's growth westward away from its medieval core, and the Andalucia Bridge marks the point where Cordoba's ring road meets the wider motorway network.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Córdoba, Spain

Opening Date: 28/02/2004