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Francisco Griñán
Madrid
Thursday, 26 September 2024, 18:31
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One of the great unknowns of the future Auditorio de la Música de Málaga (Malaga music auditorium) has now been resolved: How much will it cost? The answer was revealed on Wednesday 25 September by the city's mayor, Francisco de la Torre.
De la Torre revealed the information while sharing initial data from a technical study drawn up to update the project for the construction of the new cultural infrastructure on the San Andrés del Puerto platform. And the result raises the original budget for the construction of the new site by almost half: forecasts in 2013 established that the space would cost just over 115 million euros. However, the latest forecast is that the bill will increase significantly to over 200 million.
202
million euros will be the cost of building the Malaga auditorium by 2024.
45
million will be provided by the state; 25 million by the Junta de Andalucía; 20 million by the city hall; 10 million by the Diputación. Private companies will finance the rest, 102 million euros.
"The budgets are being updated and that means a higher cost because, if we were at 115 million euros a few years ago, now we are at 202 million, which is the latest data that the architects are outlining," explained the mayor at a press conference on the updating of the work. The project is being carried out by the architects who won the original contract, Federico Soriano and Agustín Benedicto. The pair designed a space conceived for both music and spoken word performances. In this new calculation there are no design changes, but rather a revision of the project's prices.
In the last three years alone, since global inflation rose following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the cost of construction has risen by 25% in Spain. However, the readjustment of the project has not only taken into account the increase in the price of buildings, but also the use of new materials that did not exist a decade ago and compliance with changes in safety legislation in urban planning.
De la Torre, who has stated that the auditorium is his "priority" at the moment, together with the problem of "housing" and tourist apartments, has also explained that this price increase is intended to be compensated by the entry of private capital that would assume half of the new budget, 102 million euros. The mayor has already revealed that Unicaja and Mayoral are among the private companies interested in covering part of this bill of millions of euros, although he has clarified that to define these investments he needs to have the public investment confirmed and urged the state and the Ministry of Culture to help out.
"We have the option of private sponsorship and we are finalising agreements with the Junta de Andalucía and the Diputación, which are in agreement, and the central government, which is not closed and is taking longer than it should in my opinion," De la Torre said. In May he announced that the agreement with Pedro Sánchez's government was already fixed, which led to a controversy with the Ministry of Culture, which denied the pact and only confirmed negotiations.
To date, the agreement has not yet been definitively approved. According to the mayor, the proposed distribution of the economic burden is that the provincial authority, the Diputación de Málaga, will contribute 10 million euros; the city hall, 20 million, the regional government 25, and finally the State, 45, to make a total of 100 million euros. However, the ministerial allocation, the largest of all the public entities and fundamental to balance the budget, is the one that has yet to materialise.
The Malaga auditorium is one of the great tasks still pending in the cultural sphere in Malaga since the 1980's, when its construction began to be discussed and planned. It is an important infrastructure to provide the city with a space for big shows which it currently lacks. According to Benedicto and Soriano's project, the main hall would have a maximum capacity of more than 1,700 seats, which is 700 more than the capacity of the Cervantes theatre, the largest in the city at the moment.
On the steps prior to construction, the mayor also renewed the information and pointed out that, after the formalisation last July of the purchase for 11 million euros of the plot of land in the Port of Malaga on which the auditorium will be built, the operation has not yet been completed for bureaucratic reasons. "We are awaiting the purchase process, but it has a somewhat lengthy administrative process with the authorisation of Puertos del Estado and then Patrimonio also has to approach other state bodies to see if they are interested in the plot," the mayor explained.
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