Next Monday will be the worst day to drive around the city, and Black Friday is largely to blame

The combination of commercial activity driven by Black Friday, the weather forecast and an international summit point to 2 December as the worst day to drive in Madrid and Barcelona

A study by Happy Box, a parcel delivery company operating in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Seville, Valencia and Murcia, using everything from scooters to trucks for deliveries, identifies next Monday, 2 December, as the worst day to drive in the most populated cities in Spain.

On the one hand, due to the increase in online purchases this week, which has tomorrow, Friday 29 November, as one of the busiest days of the year thanks to what has been adopted as Black Friday, deliveries by courier companies of products bought online may put more delivery drivers, and therefore more vehicles, on the road.

The company itself estimates that, between 1 December and 7 January alone, delivery companies could hire up to 8,000 people to reinforce the collection and delivery of goods, since this year a 15 percent increase in sales over 2018 is expected.

But, in addition to the impact of Black Friday on traffic, in Madrid, the holding of the UN Climate Change Summit will make traffic harder in the capital, especially in the northeast area of Madrid, bounded by the start of the A-1 and A-2 motorways, together with the M-40 ring road and the proximity of the access roads to Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport.

Nature joins forces with Black Friday

Although for the weekend the weather forecast predicts rain on Saturday and Sunday, the risk of rain in Madrid, one of the factors that most hinders traffic, drops significantly for Monday.

A condition that is expected to make an appearance, especially during the hours of heaviest traffic in other large cities, and that seems to will affect other cities.

Thus, in Barcelona, Black Friday will not only affect street activity in the Catalan capital but also, according to the State Meteorological Agency, Monday has a high probability, of up to 70 percent, of rain during the early hours of the day.

This circumstance is replicated in Murcia and Valencia, with a 60 and 55 percent probability, respectively, that precipitation will appear during Monday, 2 December.