Council now claims that the expansion of the Orihuela Costa health centre was unfeasible

The Orihuela government team said on Monday, December 29th, that the Ministry of Health has officially confirmed that the expansion of the Orihuela Costa Health Centre cannot happen because the initially proposed plot is “technically and urban planning infeasible.” This information was sent to the Orihuela City Council in reports and communications.

The regional health department’s own documents say that the land proposed for the centre’s expansion has “serious urban planning deficiencies” because the cadastral data doesn’t match the municipal plan and the land is classified as a road, or street, rather than a building plot. The Health Department says that this situation stops the issue of “a favourable technical report and makes the planned expansion impossible from a legal and urban planning point of view.”

Department of Health

In this regard, the Ministry of Health formally asked the City Council twice, in letters dated October 7th and November 9th, 2022, to do the necessary cadastral and registry regularisation of the plot during the previous municipal term, which was led by the socialist Carolina Gracia after Emilio Bascuñana was ousted from the Mayor’s office by a motion of censure. They made it clear that the administrative procedure could not continue, the project could not be draughted, and the health centre could not be expanded without this correction.

The Orihuela City Council said this three years later, when the city suggested a different location to avoid this expansion and instead have the Generalitat (the Valencian regional government) build a second health centre to meet the needs of the northern coastal area of Orihuela. The single health centre on the Orihuela coast right now serves about 30,000 people, but it might serve a lot more people in the summer.

The Orihuela City Council says that the regional government’s own papers show that these complaints were never resolved, hence a favourable technical report was never given. This means that the project was “blocked solely for technical and urban planning reasons.” The councilwoman says that “no financial investment was lost” because laws don’t allow public money to be used for projects on land that isn’t totally legal and heritage-friendly.

The papers

Irene Celdrán, the Councillor for Health, said that “the official documents are very clear and say that the expansion can’t happen because it’s not technically possible, since the land is a road and not a building plot.” You can’t build or add on to a health centre on a street. We have always been honest, and now the Regional Ministry backs us up.

The new piece of land

Celdrán remembered that in October 2024, the Orihuela City Council suggested a new municipal plot of land in the H-1 Villarosa zone that would be good for healthcare facilities and meets the necessary urban planning requirements. The latest plenary session authorised the request for the delegation of authority to build this new location, and it already has a positive preliminary technical feasibility study. The councilwoman ended by saying, “This governing team is still working hard to give Orihuela Costa the healthcare infrastructure it needs, always based on solid technical foundations and in accordance with the law.”

In June 2004, the Orihuela Costa health centre opened as an auxiliary clinic on a 2,400-square-metre piece of land with about 800 square meters of construction space. A few years later, it grew into a full-fledged health centre. It started out tiny because it was meant to service a population of only 14,000 people.

Some changes and a footbridge that keeps the plot from turning into a road

Since the current General Urban Development Plan was created in 1990, the Orihuela City Council has authorised more than 70 specific changes to the city’s planning. Real estate developers generally asked for these changes to make the blueprint fit new needs. The only problems have been with the paperwork and the time it takes to finish it. Because of this, certain places that were supposed to be highways have been turned into homes, and vice versa. These changes have also made it possible to take protected structures off the city’s historical lists and change the zoning of some plots of land so that public facilities can be built there.

If the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) includes a road on the plot that is supposed to be used for the expansion of the Aguamarina health centre, as the City Council says, it is unlikely that it will actually be used for that purpose from an urban planning point of view. The goal would be to link Calle Cielo to Calle Mar, which runs parallel to it. But right now, there is a pedestrian flyover at the intersection of Calle Cielo and that plot that lets people over the N-332. To make the new road, all of the existing infrastructure would have to be taken down.