Junta awards 10.2-million-euro contract to build new 'eco' secondary school in Benalmádena Pueblo
The construction of the four-level educational centre will take around two years and have capacity for 500 students
The Junta de Andalucía's regional ministry for educational development and vocational training has awarded the contract for the construction of the new secondary education institute (IES) in Benalmádena Pueblo. The work will be carried out by the ECSA Obra Pública y Civil S.L. company for 10,288,985.04 euros and with a completion period of 22 months from the start of the construction work.
The new school, which will respond to the demand for schooling in the area, will be of type D3+B2.2, that is, it will have three lines of compulsory secondary education, with 360 school places, and two lines of sixth form, with 140 places, adding up to a total capacity for 500 pupils.
The school, which will have its main entrance on Avenida Retamar, will be located on a plot of 5,760 square metres located in the Retamar Santa Matilde residential development, an area of expansion close to Benalmádena Pueblo. It will have a built surface area of 4,814 square metres, distributed into a teaching area, administration area, common services and outdoor spaces.
Four levels
The building will be organised across four levels. On the lower floor, which serves as the entrance to the centre, the administration area will be located, including the offices for the secretary’s office, reception and reprographics, as well as rooms for the headteacher, parents’ and students’ association, guidance office, staff room and toilets. This level will also house the library; the special education classroom with an adapted toilet, a general storeroom and changing rooms for non-teaching staff. The library will have access from outside the building for extracurricular use and will be situated near the main entrance to the centre.
On floor P-1, at the level of the sports court, the cafeteria and the gymnasium with toilets and changing rooms will be located. On the first and second floors there will be six multi-purpose secondary classrooms on each floor (a total of 12), as well as toilets, departments, laboratories, workshop classrooms, music classrooms, art classrooms, support classrooms and classrooms for extra-curricular activities. On the third floor there will be four multi-purpose high school classrooms, together with toilets, laboratories, drawing, technology, support and extra-curricular activities classrooms. In the outdoor areas, the centre will have a covered porch, a play area, a multi-sports court, a garden area and an allotment.
"Since 2019, the Junta de Andalucía has promoted ten new centres in the province, six of which have been completed"
The delegate for educational development and vocational training in Malaga, Miguel Briones, has expressed his satisfaction with the new project. "This new centre is proof of the Junta de Andalucía's commitment to providing the province of Malaga with the necessary educational infrastructure, especially in areas such as Benalmádena, where population growth requires an increase in the number of schools on offer. Since 2019, there are already ten new centres, six of them finished, which have been promoted by the Junta de Andalucía in the province," said the delegate.
For his part, the mayor of Benalmádena, Juan Antonio Lara, has welcomed the arrival of this infrastructure, "highly demanded by the entire educational community of the municipality", adding that it has seen the light thanks to the collaboration between the regional government and Benalmádena town hall.
Bioclimatisation
The new school will also be equipped with a bioclimatisation system using adiabatic cooling. This is an ecological air conditioning system, an alternative to conventional air conditioning, which reduces the interior temperature of the classrooms by evaporating water with reduced electricity consumption. This system will be supported by an installation of photovoltaic solar panels that will reduce electricity costs for the centre while reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
This bioclimatic installation will comply with the "technical instruction on the design of installations for the bioclimatic conditioning of educational centres", by which all school buildings located in climate severity zones 3 and 4 (98.3 per cent of the municipalities of Andalucía and 100 per cent in the province of Malaga), are already planned with this cooling system. The building will also have radiator heating with heat generation by means of high temperature aerothermal equipment, in order to avoid the use of fossil fuels.
The construction of the new school in Benalmádena is part of the educational infrastructure plan of the regional education ministry, which is implemented through the Andalusian public agency for education and which is co-financed by the European Union through the Andalucía ERDF programme 2021-2027.
