Almonte Viaduct (Spain)

World’s widest single span bridge

Work is underway to build Spain’s 996m long Almonte Viaduct to carry the AVE high speed railway over the Alcantara reservoir, on the Madrid to Extremadura route. A temporary system consisting of 208 HiAm CONA 5506 and 3706 stay cables is being installed by the BBR Network Member BBR PTE during the concreting of the arch segments. There are eight groups of stay cables – four for pulling and four for retaining operations – all are assembled on the ground and lifted into position using cranes. Before the segments of the arch are concreted, the stay cables are stressed in a synchronised sequence, applying force to the pulling and retaining cables at the same time. The BBR team is also using heavy lifting techniques here for the raising of the tightening towers.