Head of Junta opens sixth public healthcare centre in Marbella and highlights investment
The new Ricardo Soriano facilities in the town have 24 consulting rooms and will serve more than 20,000 people
The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, inaugurated the Ricardo Soriano health centre on Monday 3 November. This is Marbella's sixth public health centre, representing the fulfilment of an electoral promise made in 2018 in response to demands made by the residents and the town hall.
The facilities have opened their doors thanks to an investment of more than three million euros by the town hall, which has transformed what was the headquarters of the urban planning department during the GIL era and which the PSOE tried to auction off on two occasions. The new health centre will serve a population of more than 20,000 people.
The Marbella Oeste health centre will ease the pressure on the Leganitos centre and put an end to "decades of space problems", according to Moreno, who was accompanied by the mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, among other authorities.
Muñoz highlighted that the town hall also financed the construction of the Las Chapas clinic, which opened in July and the extensions of the Las Albarizas and Nueva Andalucía centres, which have not yet come into service. "It is a radical 180-degree change that has been made to the healthcare map of Marbella," said the mayor.
"One hundred per cent of the health centres on the Costa del Sol have undergone partial or total improvements in the last six years".
With a surface area of around 2,000 square metres, the Ricardo Soriano health centre has 24 consulting rooms, one of them for minor surgery, as well as a physiotherapy room, a service that until now was not provided in Leganitos; a mammograph, in addition to the four existing ones; an ultrasound scanner and a retinograph. It has 20 professionals working there and another five shared with Leganitos. It is open from 8am to 3pm although Moreno has assured that the health department is working to ensure that it will open uninterruptedly for twelve hours (from 8am to 8pm).
The health centre is part of the "intense renovation plan" that the Andalusian regional government has been carrying out since 2019, improving and modernising health services, according to Moreno, who put the investments made to improve the province's health network at 330 million euros, 72 of them for the extension of the Costa del Sol University Hospital (HUCS) in Marbella. The Andalusian president said that "one hundred percent of the health centres on the Costa del Sol have undergone partial or total improvements" in the last six years.
Screening and health spending
In a speech in which no questions were allowed, Moreno implicitly referred to the breast cancer screening crisis by pointing out that in Andalucía 588 million medical procedures are carried out annually, so "it is impossible for there to be no errors".
Moreno defended the fact that Andalucía has a health system "with the capacity to improve", but said it is "solid" and stressed that the region has gone from being at the bottom in terms of spending per inhabitant to being "above average".
In 2026, health spending will reach 16,300 million euros, practically a third of the budgets of the Andalusian regional government and a figure which in the health area exceeds the total budget of all the regions with the exception of Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia. In Malaga province, the 2026 budget will amount to 91 million euros, some 20 million more than in 2025, of which 30 million will go to the third hospital in Malaga city.
