TERRA.WIRE
Heavy snowfall disrupts transport in Spain, closes airport
 MADRID, Jan 9 (AFP) Jan 09, 2009
 Heavy snowfall disrupted road and rail transportation on Friday in Spain and forced the closure of Madrid's airport as a cold spell continued to grip much of Europe, officials said.

All four runways at Madrid's Barajas airport, one of Europe's busiest, closed at 11:50 am (1050 GMT) and will remain shut until further notice because of the rare snowfall and low visibility, the national airport authority AENA said.

"There are no arrivals, there are no departures," a spokeswoman for the authority told AFP.

A total 1,205 flights were scheduled to take off and land at the airport on Friday, the airport authority said in a statement.

Barajas is the fourth largest airport in terms of passenger traffic after London's Heathrow, Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt's main airport, according to the Geneva-based Airports Council International, an association of the world's airports.

By late morning, bad weather triggered nearly 400 kilometres (250 miles) of traffic jams around the Spanish capital, causing headaches for thousands of drivers, and dozens of accidents and collisions.

"Traffic is very difficult in the centre of Spain, many roads are cut especially in the Madrid region where it is recommended not to drive," a spokesman for the interior ministry's traffic management agency DGT told AFP.

State railway operator Renfe said trains were continuing to circulate throughout its network but at slower speeds because of the weather conditions, causing delays.

The regional government of Madrid set up a "crisis cabinet" to deal with the effects of the heavy snowfall, which was also hitting the region of Castilla-la-Mancha southeast of the capital as well as western Spain.

Santiago de Compostela, a destination for thousands of pilgrims in northwestern Spain, recorded the biggest snowfall in its history on Friday, according to the online edition of daily newspaper El Mundo.

Office workers gathered at building entrances and windows in Madrid to watch the snow fall while others staged snowball fights on city sidewalks.

Up to 10 centimetres (four inches) of snow had accumulated in Madrid as temperatures in the region dropped as low as minus six degrees Celsius (21 Fahrenheit).

The national weather office predicts the inclement weather will continue until at least Saturday across much of Spain.