By Alex Watkins
According to an interview with the mayor of Orihuela, the town hall appears to have offered to pay for a second health centre to be built in Orihuela Costa, even though it is the responsibility of the regional government.
Opposition party Cambiemos Orihuela criticised this decision as an act of ‘subordination’, and expressed concern that it could end up like the courthouse in the city, which the regional government was also supposed to pay for.
In the interview in regional Spanish online publication Alicante Plaza, mayor Pepe Vegara said: “We are going to have a second health centre in Orihuela Costa at the end of 2025, it will be built and up and running.”
He claimed that a location had been decided but could not yet be revealed, and that the regional health department had accepted the town hall’s offer to build it in return for staffing the centre with doctors.
More details will be provided ‘in a few months’, added Sr Vegara.
Cambiemos spokeswoman Leticia Pertegal reminded that it is not the responsibility of town halls to build health centres.
She notedthat Orihuela town hall built the courthouse during the time of Partido Popular (PP) mayor José Manuel Medina (1995-2007), but although the PP regional administration promised to pay back the cost, it never did and the town hall did not receive the compensation until after the so-called Botànic left-wing coalition had taken office in Valencia.
She argued that this is not good for the interests of Orihuela and insisted the council must explain how and where it intends to do this, where it thinks it will get the money from and how much it is going to cost residents.
“The residents of Orihuela Costa do not deserve more of this dizziness and announcements like this when what they really need are solutions,” said Sra Pertegal.
“It is unacceptable that the regional health department and the town hall continue with this back and forth, prolonging an unsustainable situation as has happened with the third primary school for the coast.”
New school delays explained
The school was originally supposed to open in September 2023, and then in September 2024 but still will not be ready for the start of the next academic year, all the while overcrowding at the other two schools has been causing more and more problems for pupils and teachers, and prompting parents to stage a protest.
In the interview, Sr Vegara claimed the estimated cost of preparing the plot for installation of prefabricated classrooms was initially €60,000 but had increased to over €200,000 because the design of the classrooms had been changed to fit in more children, and this required a new project to be drawn up.
“At best we could have those classrooms there for the end of this year,” the mayor claimed.
