Many buildings in Orihuela’s city centre are dominated by a tangle of overhead cables. Residents of Orihuela have become accustomed to seeing them as part of the environment after years of improper supervision of the installation of communication service wiring. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped neighbours from complaining about their overwhelming presence on the facades of both public and private buildings, as well as on the streets itself, especially in the centre of the historic centre, which has been recognised as a Site of Cultural Interest. The cable’s unsightly appearance and safety issues are the main causes of the complaints. In Orihuela, a festival designated as an International Tourist Attraction, it is even typical to have to lift the tangled web of cables during the processions of Holy Week.
In other parts of the municipality, mostly the outlying districts, where subterranean cabling is nonexistent, this is also noticeable.
The government of the PP-Vox coalition has admitted that this is an issue that requires attention. The City Council is requiring the companies to remove them, according to Councillor for Urban Planning Matías Ruiz. However, he did not rule out drafting a municipal ordinance to regulate the proper urban integration of electrical and telecommunications installations, reorganising or eliminating the urban cabling that many operators have been installing, often in an uncontrolled manner by the local administration and in a way that is detrimental to the interests of residents and the city’s image.
Additionally, there are no plans to use our own resources or include a specific allocation for this purpose in the upcoming 2026 budget, which is still pending. Additionally, the City Council is requiring the companies to conduct an audit of the existing urban cabling in the municipality’s urban areas in order to inventory, reorganise, and, where appropriate, possibly eliminate it.
The councillor also emphasised that the cables have already been removed in the recent renovations of El Paseo, the old Caja de Monserrate building, the Rubalcava Palace, and the old courthouses. She also assured them that undergrounding is now a requirement for licences for new construction.
A recurring problem that the PSOE previously brought to a plenary session in 2016 and 2021, when the proposal was also approved, was brought up again by Ciudadanos in the most recent plenary session with the government team’s opposition. The same thing happened in September 2022 with Vox, which is still going forward.
Given that the area is protected by the Special Plan for the Organisation and Protection of the Historic Centre, the City Council even stopped the installation of fibre optics in 2017 and started urban planning disciplinary proceedings against three telecom companies. The cabling was installed on the facades of centuries-old private buildings, which upset the owners.
Interest in general
Even so, a legal loophole was found in the Telecommunications Law, which views it as a service of general interest because these infrastructures address communication and technical needs, even though their existence and growth continue to present problems from a legal, cultural, and aesthetic perspective.
The right of citizens to access high-speed communication networks was actually explicitly established by the regulations in 2022. This gives operators the freedom to install the required infrastructure, even on private property facades, as long as there isn’t an underground conduit or a workable substitute.
All of this does not, however, grant operators unrestricted authority because the legislation itself states that facade installations are not permitted in legitimate situations involving historical or artistic structures or those that could endanger public safety.
In this regard, the excessive presence of tangled cables must be governed by municipal regulations; in Orihuela, this is addressed in a few sporadic and dispersed regulatory references, but this is adequate for the Councillor for Urban Planning.
Outdated
There are frequently cables that provide no service at all, but the people who placed them have never taken them down, and the municipal services have no idea what kind of service they offer.
In keeping with this, the Congress of Deputies recently passed a non-binding resolution that was proposed by the Socialist group. It calls on the government to examine changing the current regulations to mandate that businesses remove outdated cabling that is no longer in use. This will help to improve the safety and aesthetics of cities, make it easier to install new infrastructure, and encourage material recycling.
According to Ruiz, all of this will solve the issue, but for others, these are insufficient steps that won’t stop the network of cables on a monumental city’s facades, close to monuments and museums, causing visual pollution and continuing the assault on heritage in a historic centre with distinctive features that need to be preserved.
Author: Derek Appleton
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