A WEEKEND of carnage on Spanish roads has left 101 dead and hundreds injured as motorists failed to heed warnings for safer driving during the Easter holiday exodus to the costas and the countryside.

The dead included two scouts aged 9 and 15 and two of their supervisors, who died when a bus carrying 27 children aged between 4 and 16 crashed in Asturias, northern Spain.

The worst accident happened in Pontevedra when a car collided head-on with two scooters, killing five people.

More than 80 accidents were recorded by police during what is traditionally the most dangerous week of the year on Spanish roads. Motoring organisations estimate that more than 15 million journeys are made over the long holiday weekend, which begins late on Wednesday and ends on Monday.

The death toll, which will worry thousands of British motorists planning to drive in Spain this summer, is expected to be one of the highest on record despite the most intensive road safety campaign undertaken by the Spanish authorities.

In a television and radio advertisement, a caller rings a member of the public and asks: “Do you think you are going to die on the roads this week?” When the motorist asks why the question is being asked, the operator explains that 100 deaths were predicted during Easter. In 2005, 105 people died in Easter accidents but last night Spain seemed on the brink of setting a fresh morbid record.

In recent years road safety campaigns have reduced the number of deaths, but Spain still has one of the worst records in Europe. The bloodiest year in recent memory was in 1990, when 192 people died in traffic accidents at Easter.

Jacobo Díaz, the head of the Spanish Roads Association, said that 101 deaths during the holiday period was no surprise. He said that the toll attracted more attention at Easter, but every week an alarming number of people were killed in road accidents.

Despite repeated safety campaigns, the obvious dangers of driving at such a busy time and traffic jams stretching up to 30 miles (50km), Spaniards find it hard to resist heading off for a break. Signs on motorways across the country display last year’s death toll and plead with drivers to slow down.

Thousands of police are deployed at the country’s worst blackspots, on main roads outside Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, and on motorways heading towards Andalusia in the south. Statistically, the most dangerous day of the year to get behind the wheel in Spain is the Wednesday evening before Good Friday, as many leave early to miss the worst of the holiday traffic.

Last night emergency services were bracing themselves for more chaos on the busiest routes including the A3 motorway from Valencia to Madrid, the AP6 from La Coruña in northwest Spain to the capital and the A5 from Extremadura in the west to Madrid. The A4 motorways from Andalusia to Madrid and the AP7 back towards Barcelona were also expected to be extremely busy.

Motoring groups blamed the lack of a social conscience on the part of notoriously aggressive Spanish drivers for the high death toll. They say that most accidents happen on smaller roads, not motorways, where drivers relax and take less care.

Antonio Lucas, the co-ordinator of the Spanish Royal Automobile Club, said: “The tougher penalties, radar traps, points-based licences are just one way to reduce these deaths, not the only one. What we lack is social conscience.”

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