The A-22 Toll Road

Hello everyone. Another thing that my summer tenants always ask me about is the famous toll road on the Algarve motorway, the A-22, so I’m going to dedicate this post to telling you about my experience of this topic and everything I know about it that will be useful to you, which is a lot.

Well, the A-22 toll road was put into place in 2011 or 2012 if I remember rightly, and since then it’s rare that I don’t make a return trip to Portugal at least once a week. My route is always from the border of Ayamonte, Huelva to Albufeira, but the motorway stretches the whole of the Algarve in Portugal.

For those who are used to the classic tolls where there’s a little window with a person behind it who charges you, like in Cadiz for example, I’ll tell you now that this is nothing like it. It’s what they call an electronic toll, which means that moving along the motorway you’ll see some white arches with prices on the right on blue plaque, and you’ll be automatically charged when passing through. It’s thought that they’re considering the passenger’s comfort, since you don’t need to stop nor queue so your journey isn’t delayed. By the way, on these plaques there are different prices depending on the type of vehicle that you have. For example, a sedan will pay less than a 4x4 which will pay less than a lorry. I suppose it’s because the heavier the vehicle, the more it will wear away the road, but who knows, maybe it’s another swindle.

The good thing is that you don’t waste time stopping to pay in the middle of the road and another good thing is that apparently nobody controls when you go through, which could lead you to think that you’re going for free.

The bad thing is that it’s all explained badly, no matter how many different languages it’s written in. Also, they direct you badly at the border, the machines don’t work and the only people who can help you there, which are the GNR workers (Portuguese military police, but nothing like the Spanish ones), don’t help you because they’re fed up of lost tourists coming on the search for information and direction.

Although many people will tell you that you can find information on the Portugal Tolls website, I’ll tell you now that this is also very badly explained and works really badly. This page has all of the electronic toll roads in the country, one of them being the A-22. It gives you the option to put in the journey you want to make, entering your starting point and end point and if you’ll be going from one road to another. This would be great if it worked, but when you select “calculate” nothing happens, and if something does appear it will be a message saying that the prices are just a guide and that they can charge whatever they want.

In fact, last year they lowered the prices of this motorway and set different prices depending on the time of day. If you go after 8pm in winter, for example, it’s cheaper than going before this time in summer.

It’s outrageous that I found out about this from a newspaper in Huelva, when I spend half of the week in the Algarve. Even then, you can’t see these prices anywhere, you can only see those that are written on the blue plaques that are found on each stretch.

So now, let’s break it down. Let’s start with the different methods of payment.

The first one, that almost all tourists do, is pay at the border. There you’re faced with several lanes with machines where you put your credit or debit card. When you cross the bridge that separates Huelva from Portugal you see a sign to the right in various languages that tells you to go to the right in order to pay at the border. But once you divert you feel a little lost. I’m saying this from personal experience, so although it sounds exaggerated I can assure you that it’s true. I ended up trying my card in all of the machines that are at the border and it didn’t work in ANY. Honestly, it was already making me not want to pay. On top of this, you remember the fact that the motorway was built with European funds and it makes me angry that I don’t want to pay for it.

When this toll was installed, other European countries complained because it’s illegal to charge on a motorway that hasn’t been built using the country’s own funds or built privately, like in the case of Cadiz. But this coincided with the time when the country was overcome by recession and to avoid it being rescued by Europe they allowed them to charge for the motorway to get money from elsewhere and therefore be able to move forward on its own.

To top it off, you’ve got to consider the awful state of the motorway. If you go in the right lane towards Albufeira you’ll be bouncing through the enormous potholes that cover the entire motorway. Really, that’s why nobody wants to pay because it’s a huge injustice. But anyway, I’ll carry on telling you the other ways you can pay, because I suppose some of you will want to pay. Oh, I forgot to say, if you use this method (on a day that the machine works, of course), you only need to put your card in the machine and it will connect it with your number plate. From then on, it will charge you for all of the tolls that you take, each time you take them for a whole month, as well as an inscription fee and a handling fee, both less than a euro, but another rip-off in my opinion.

So, the next way to pay is to buy some cards that they sell in Portuguese petrol stations with different amounts of money. You’ve got to work out for yourself how much each journey is going to cost you to get you your destination and buy a card with five, ten or twenty euros. These cards have a code that you’ve got to initiate by sending a text message from your phone to the number that they give you, or make a call to this number. Of course, neither the message nor the call are free. Another scam in my eyes, really.

The next option is to buy another type of card that they sell in post offices, but not in Spain, so you’ve got to arrive at your destination and search for an office, something that nobody really fancies doing when they travel. But at least in the post offices they point you in the right direction because they’re used to it. What I don’t understand is what all of this has got to do with the post office, but whatever. You can buy these cards with a defined route, for example, if you’re in Albufeira you only need to say that you want the whole return journey from Helva to Albufeira and Albufeira to Helva.

The final option, at least that I know of, like they’ve brought out another and I’ve missed it. This option is a Vía Verde device. They’re small electronic devices that you keep inside the car, associated with a bank account and they charge you automatically each time you take the toll. These devices are sold by different companies and, usually, in your own bank. But do your research, because my bank, Santander, was charging me a monthly fee of 50 euros for the device and this seemed extortionate, so I looked at other options and found a company called Bip&Drive, who also did me a special discount because of where my Dad was working. It costed us an initial fee of 5 euros and then 5 euros per year.

The good thing about this method is the ease of it as obviously, it means you don’t lose time stopping anywhere or having to buy things every now and again. The bad thing, at least in my case for the time I was using it, is that there’s a delay when they charge you and then don’t charge for each complete journey, but a charge appears every time you pass through one of the electronic arches. So at the end of the month, it’s not clear whether they’ve charged you too much or not.

I suppose each method can be convenient depending on when you’re in Portugal. I’ve used all the ones I’ve mentioned at different times and the final one is the one that suits me the most because I go every week and therefore I don’t drive myself crazy with the other methods.

I suppose I should tell you how I really came to use one or the other.

When they installed the toll years ago, here in Huelva lots of things were being mentioned about whether it was possible to fine Spanish number plates if they didn’t pay the toll or about whether the only way they could catch you was if the GNR stopped you in the middle of the motorway…

My Dad told me that one of his military police friends assured him that they had no way of registering our Spanish number plates in Portugal, so I decided not to pay. So the years passed and I was going every week without paying and nothing ever happened nor did anyone ever stop me.

I even skipped the Lisbon toll once, because this one has the typical window where somebody charges you, but it also had a Vía Verde, where you can pass through without stopping if you’ve got the Vía Verde device in your car. I didn’t have it, of course, but I decided to skip paying. All of this happened in February 2012 and one day in 2015 I received a letter telling me that I owed this toll.

Thankfully it didn’t say anything about the A-22 toll, just the A-2, the motorway to Lisbon. They gave me an account number where I could pay what I owed and they told me that if I didn’t pay within two months, they’d take me to court. The worst thing was that the letter came from a law firm in Huelva, not from a Portuguese organisation, which shocked me a little so I began to investigate.

It turns out the Portuguese had hired this law firm to charge fines to Spanish people and be able to access our data, but I also read that a fine cannot be charged two years after the date of offence, and this date had already passed, so I followed the advice from the forums and decided not to pay. To this day, almost the end of 2017, I’ve never heard anything more about it and nobody has taken me to court. I’ve not received a warning, an appointment… nothing at all.

Meanwhile, I carried on taking the A-22 without paying the other toll, until one damned day when I stopped in the petrol station in Loule about a year ago now. I usually stopped in Ayamonte to put petrol in because it’s a lot cheaper than in Portugal and whilst I’m there I make use of the toilets, but that day I didn’t feel well and I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stopped at this petrol station.

I’ll regret that for a very, very long time. When I was coming back from the bathroom a white car with blue and orange stickers was parked next to me. I didn’t pay much attention to it, I got in my car and when I was putting my seatbelt on they knocked on my window to get my attention. I rolled the window down a little and two uniformed men appeared saying that they were controllers of the Loule A-22 toll. Ground please swallow me, was all that I was thinking.

They asked me for the vehicle documentation. My details didn’t bother them, because they only wanted to register my car’s number plate.

They opened their boot and took out a strange type of laptop, entered the details of my car and told me that I owed a huge amount of toll money that I hadn’t paid for years. All I wanted to do was run and I told them that I didn’t understand Portuguese and that I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.

They didn’t make any effort to speak to me in Spanish, they just spoke a little more slowly. It didn’t make a difference to me, I’d understood them perfectly and I was just messing around to try to get myself out of the situation.

I told them a cock-and-bull story about having just returned from France and that my brother had been using the car throughout the past few years and that I knew nothing. But my excuses didn’t help anything. They told me that I had to pay in order to leave. I gave them my card, which of course didn’t have anywhere near the amount of money that I owed, but so that they would leave me in peace.

As hoped for, my card was rejected. I told them that I could pay 50 euros that I had in cash and that I would pay the rest the following week. They threatened me, saying that if I went without paying the full amount they would tell the GNR and if they pulled me over they could seize the car until I paid. I went into a complete panic, turned hysterical and started crying. All I could do was call my parents. At least I knew that they had the necessary money to pay all of my debt. The problem was that they weren’t letting me return to Spain with my car either, so my parents had to come to where I was to be able to pay. I was only thinking about my bad luck for having stopped in this petrol station, because they didn’t even work in the others, just in the one in Loule, which is also the final one before I turn off for Albufeira. If it wasn’t for me feeling off, I would never have stopped 15 minutes away from getting home.

I called my mum hysterically lost and the poor thing worried thinking that I’d had an accident and that something had happened to me. So when I told her what was happening she was glad. I told the agents, or whatever these two men were, that my parents were going to come and pay the full debt.

Then my dad called me to calm me down and tell me not to worry, that it wasn’t worth crying about nor feeling bad about anything that could be solved with money, but that they couldn’t come to where I was because they would also make them pay the debt for their own car.

For all of these years my parents hadn’t been to Portugal like me, but considering we also have family there and that we’ve always liked the family, they owed a large sum of money too.

So I told the two men that my parents could only come to the border and asked them to let me go that far. Of course, they didn’t let me, but they told me that they would go to the border and that I could either go with them or wait in the petrol station. I was not up for getting in their car, to I told them that I would wait.

In this moment I was thinking about escaping from there and going speeding off to Albufeira in my car, but of course then they would always be pursuing me. My thoughts were racing ahead of me whilst I was waiting and I even considered that it would turn out cheaper to buy a new car without fines and sell mine. The wait was driving me crazy, so I opened my suitcase and took out a mandala colouring book because colouring is very relaxing.

I noted the number plate of the agents’ car and told it to my parents so that they knew who they had to meet with, and to remember it and run from it in future if they ever found me again.

The agents arrived at the border more quickly than they should have, and a little later they send me a message saying that my parents had paid the debt in full and that I could leave if I wanted to, but not to forget to pay the rest of the journey to Albufeira.

So in that same petrol station they reluctantly explained to me how the fixed-quantity cards that I told you about earlier worked. Extremely angry, I paid it, sent the damn payment message and my mum called me to calm me down once more before I left.

A quarter of an hour later I arrived home after the most expensive journey of my life.

After all of this commotion I educated myself by going to the same GNR and they told me that they are fed up with everything about the toll road and that it’s not in their power. I repeat, the GNR cannot do anything in respect to the toll. So these men, because I’m not sure if I can call them what I really want to call them here, had scammed me into paying because they must have been earning commission and they gained an entire month’s wage from me. But don’t be scammed like I was, the GNR can’t seize your car not fine you for not paying nor can they do anything concerning the damned toll.

From that day onwards I decided to buy the electronic device that I was telling you about earlier, until one day I decided that I didn’t want to pay the Portuguese a single penny more for a motorway that had been built with funds that weren’t theirs and one that they weren’t capable of keeping in good condition.

I’ve come across this white car with orange and blue stickers several times, which is a Renault by the way, so if you see it you already know to continue and not stop. What I do now if I need to stop is use one of the spaces that they have along the motorway. They’re marked with a blue ‘P’ and are there for lorry drivers or people who need to stop and relax. There’s no toilets or anything, just recycling bins. But my advice is that if you can avoid stopping in petrol stations and you can stop here instead, you’ll have no problems with not paying the toll.

Finally, if you’ve got any doubts about this topic you can write to me. I’d love to help you.

Bye everyone!

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