2023-07-01 19:00:26
The urban transformation and its corresponding socioeconomic consequences that have characterized the evolution of Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelonès) the last decade are not exhausted in the Granvia of the second most populated city in Catalonia. The avenue, around which the Europa Square economic districtshare urban interest with the local demarcation on which another great metamorphosis is projected in the coming years: the north of L’Hospitalet.
It is there, at the intersection between the municipalities of Barcelona, L’Hospitalet and Esplugues, where projects of both depth and Can Rigalt, for whose transformation Barça has the key, or the expansion of the Hospital Clinic, agreed in the nearby sports grounds of the University of Barcelona (UB) on Diagonal, right on the border with L’Hospitalet.
The urban upheaval of the area, however, keeps in suspense to another of the great neighborhood and institutional demands of L’Hospitalet: his new Hospital General. The mayor herself Núria Marín (PSC) has repeatedly influenced the commitment of the Government of Catalonia, through the Department of Health, with the project from which the city demands to provide service to its densely populated northern neighborhoods -the densest in the entire European Union-, in which many residents have historically been forced to change municipalities to be treated, mainly in the Hospital Moises Broggiin Sant Joan Despí.
Waiting for Can Rigalt to get off the ground, the L’Hospitalet Town Hall insists that a soil reserve for the future General Hospital. In the same sense, and consulted by this newspaper about the future L’Hospitalet General Hospitalsources of Department of Health admit that they are “studying various future relocation options of the General Hospital within the municipality itself”, without certifying that the future center will be built in the location planned to date.
Thus, they remark from Salut that the option of land for Can Rigalt offered by the City “is not ruled out” despite the recent agreement to carry out the expansion of the Clínic a few meters from where the new hospital has been projected to date, in the rear area of the Can Rigalt farmhouse.
“We don’t have to go to the Broggi”
One of the main mantras repeated by the mayoress Núria Marín during the past term and in recent months is that her objective is to carry out the “third great transformation of L’Hospitalet“. A remodeling that includes the large pending urban projects: the PDU Biopol-Granvia, the burying of the Renfe tracks as it passes through the city and, of course, Can Rigalt.
Daniel Gimenezpresident of the Neighborhood Association of the Pubilla Cases neighborhood, where the land of Can Rigalt is located, which should house the future Hospital General, insists on the need for a new General Hospital in L’Hospitalet: “The current one is obsolete and small; when it was inaugurated it was already small and should have had twice the capacity”.
In turn, Giménez is critical of both the hospital council and the Department of Health with respect to the project for the future General Hospital, about which he emphasizes that “it began to sound in the early 2000s.” After almost two decades, the neighborhood leader reproaches that every time the association has meetings with heads of the Department of Health, “new people come and it’s like start over from scratch.”
Asked about how it could affect the future General Hospital of L’Hospitalet the proximity of the new Clinic, Giménez assures that “the Clínic is a type of center and the hospital that the north of L’Hospitalet needs is another; I have always said it: we don’t have to go to the Broggi”.
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sources of health, For their part, they defend that recently “improvement actions have been carried out in the L’Hospitalet General Hospital to adapt the conditions and equipment of the building”. They recall that during the third quarter of 2022 two operating rooms and post-surgical resuscitation beds were put into operation, improvements that Salut carried out to reduce the number of attentions of residents of L’Hospitalet in the Broggi.
Both the mayoress Marín and the then ‘councillor’ Joseph Maria Argimon (together) went to the General Hospital to announce the improvements in May of last year and both insisted on making it clear that the action was compatible with the project to build a new hospital in Can Rigalt. However, Argimon himself pointed out then that both in L’Hospitalet and in the whole of Catalonia “There are other priorities.”
The stumbling block of the electrical substation in Can Rigal
For the future urban reform of Can Rigalt to be effective, it must first overcome the great obstacle that blocks it: the Collblanc electrical substation, an installation intended to regulate the levels of electrical energy owned by Endesa. Its beginning of transfer -with works that would last for about a decade– is scheduled for before year 2027 in the current Red Eléctrica Plan approved by the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
“Moving the electrical substation is the cornerstone that will make viable any transformation of an area that from the urban point of view it is ‘premium'”recently pointed Fran Belver (PSC), First Deputy Mayor of L’Hospitalet, to this newspaper.
This transfer, however, is conditional on being paid for by the owners of the land where the substation is located. And that’s where the game comes into play. Barça as one of the three large owners of the surface (35% of the total land in Can Rigalt, about 55,000 m²) together with the real estate developer sacredness (32%), the L’Hospitalet Town Hall (25.5%) and others small owners (7,5%).
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