Malaga activates plan to expedite construction work in the city centre more than one decade later

Malaga city council is taking a decisive step to expedite building permits in the historic centre in the coming years, after more than one decade of waiting.

The municipal urban planning department has finally selected a company to draft the special protection plan for Malaga's historic centre and the catalogue of protected buildings.

This is a procedure that the Andalusian regional government (Junta) has been demanding for more than a decade, as it involves replacing the outdated special plan for protection and interior reform (PEPRI) of the centre with a new document adapted to Andalusian law.

The urban planning department has awarded this task to the only bid: Granada-based architecture firm García de los Reyes, in conjunction with Desarrollo de Ciudades Comprometidas.

Interestingly, these same Granada architects were also the only ones to submit a bid in the open competition the urban planning department launched in 2018 to update the catalogue of protected buildings. However, successive appeals from the association of architects blocked that contract, until the courts ultimately ruled in favour of the city council.

García de los Reyes will draft the new plan for the centre with a budget of 545,710 euros and an execution period of 26 months.

It is clear that the contract has generated little interest among architects, perhaps due to the financial terms. Nevertheless, the only bid achieved a high score, as required: 96.5 out of 100 points.

Adapting urban planning for the city centre to Andalusian law would the city council to directly approve any construction project in the city centre, provided it does not affect monuments, historic gardens or archaeological sites. This will significantly reduce the number of cases the regional ministry of culture would have to review.

Currently, the regional filter must be applied to all work involving demolitions and to work near monuments, even if it is of small importance, from the renovation of a premises or a house or the pit of a lift to a small electrical connection.

More than ten years ago, the Junta informed the city council that it had the obligation to adapt the planning of the historic centre to the regional heritage law. The municipal urban planning department even approved in October 2014 an advance of the revision of the special plan for the protection and rehabilitation of the historic centre.

However, it did not follow through, until the city council initiated the procedure in 2018 to contract a review of the catalogue of protected buildings of the PEPRI, a process that architect appeals halted.

The development of a new urban plan for the centre of Malaga will not only expedite a significant number of building permits, but also unblock projects that the legal dispute between the regional government and the city council has hampered for years.

The local and the regional bodies disagree on whether to maintain the original urban layout. A protection plan for the city centre, adapted to the Junta's heritage law, would resolve this conflict.

However, it will take more than two years for the new urban development plan for the city centre and the updated catalogue of protected buildings to come into effect.

The now-awarded contract requires the company developing the plan to also conduct a public participation process "in order to publicise it and analyse suggestions from the public".

The company will also have to prepare the documentation for the environmental permitting procedures "both for the special plan and for its protected buildings catalogue". This process, supervised by the Junta, is usually lengthy.

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