When Spain first joined the European Union it was much poorer than the rest of the neighborhood, which meant it was entitled to heaps of development cash to help it catch up with the rest of Europe. A large portion of this bonanza went into building roads, and Spain now has probably the best maintained and underutlized road network in the world. A couple of kilometers outside of town the houses and what little traffic there was petered out, and we had the road all to ourselves.