Tourism

Costa Tropical hotel announces start of repair work following explosion that forced it to close in March

The Olas de Almuñécar plans to start work next week to be ready for the summer season

MJ Arrebola

Granada

28/05/2026 a las 11:17h.

Work is set to begin to repair the Hotel Olas de Almuñécar on Avenida de Europa in the Costa Tropical town following the explosion during Holy Week in March this year which forced it to close ... . According to staff at the time, the event occurred while work was being to carried out on one of the boilers. The explosion, which had been preceded by several previous deflagrations, generated a fire accompanied by a large column of smoke that could be seen from different parts of the municipality.

The hotel had been closed all winter, as it is every year and the season had only just begun. Since that fateful 30 March the building has been closed with a message on the door saying: "Due to a fire we will remain closed, thank you". Behind the glass, it can be seen that what remains inside is the pending work of rebuilding everything that the explosion left destroyed.

Hotel manager Ignacio Góngora explained to IDEAL that the first thing he did was to complete all the paperwork with the insurance company. In addition, at that time the technicians also had to check that the structure of the building was safe.

Structurally the hotel was deemed safe and a cleanup operation commenced. Now, according to Góngora, "Next week, if there are no setbacks, the reconstruction work will finally begin."

The damage, he says, is mainly focused on what he calls "the guts of the hotel": the entire maintenance room on the top floor, the boilers, the hot water system, the air conditioning, the television installation and the swimming pool. Everything has to be fixed again to get the hotel up and running.

The "most complicated" issue is financing, which in his words, as it is a family business, "there is not much help," he says. The town hall and the Junta de Andalucía were "sympathetic" and guided them towards some subsidies related to energy efficiency.

The "bulk" of the reconstruction will have to come from insurance and probably a bank loan, says the manager. The situation has given them the opportunity to modernise the facilities: "The idea is to replace the old gas boilers with aerothermal systems and renewable energies, which would open the door to some public subsidies and, in the long term, would also reduce the energy bill.

Góngora is optimistic and says that the idea is to reopen in July: "It is not certain that the season will be lost", he insists, "we are fighting to open it as soon as possible because in high season, the hotel employs between twenty and twenty-five people".