Gili announced that the constructions are currently undergoing a volumetric study to decide the plot of land for each one.
The new four towers to be built on the Clot d’Emprivat site will belong to four different owners, as the mayor of Escaldes-Engordany, Rosa Gili, explained in a conversation with El Diari. The towers, which will be 20 storeys high, are in addition to the three that are currently being built and for which she did not wish to specify the terms, but ‘as they are such important constructions, the projects will take a long time because it is not like revising a villa’.
Gili announced that the procedure for the four projects is in the volumetric study phase, that is to say, that work is being done to decide in which area of the plot the constructions can be implemented. A study that was requested, ‘as there are more than one owner on a plot’, said the councillor. It is for this reason that the project is still at a very early stage, because the promoters also have to propose the space they have planned. The space, however, was greatly reduced by the interests of the developers due to the definitive approval of the modification of the POUP on 21 March 2023, precisely during Rosa Gili’s first term of office, which granted an extension of the Clot d’Emprivat green zone guaranteed by the favourable report of the technical committee for urban planning (CTU).
A green area that, with this modification, will multiply between four and five times its public use, from 15% to more than half, between 50% and 64%, in the form of cession by the construction company. According to the commons, the idea is to concentrate everything in the Prat del Roure area in order to ‘extend the green belt of the parish’. At a legal level, the idea behind the modification of the POUP is to group together all the concessions in order to have this large public space, but by means of a new figure, which is that of privately owned free spaces for public use, which means that the surface area is public, but the subsoil is private.
In the same vein, Gili was clear on the need to perpetuate the public space and wanted to emphasise both the space provided by the promoters ‘and that which is freed up, which we want to be usable and of a public nature’. The same modification of the POUP will establish that, under any circumstances, the towers of the Clot d’Emprivat can grow in height, both the four new ones and the three that are currently under construction.
This measure is part of the common will to revise the town planning plan, which is committed to be completed by 2024. A 2024 that began with the decision to suspend, as a precautionary measure, the granting of planning permission. The decision, which was taken by the committee headed by Gili and supported by the minority, was adopted unanimously at the second meeting of the parish council, held on 9 January. The council argued that they need to carry out studies of maximum capacity, which will most probably coincide with the revision of the plan.
PLANNING PERMISSIONS FALL TO ONE THIRD BY 2023
The number of applications for planning permissions in Escaldes-Engordany in 2023 fell sharply, to 37. This is 18 fewer than in 2022, when 55 applications were submitted, continuing the trend of 2021, when there were a total of 53. The councillor major, Rosa Gili, stated that ‘although we don’t have the specific details of the licences, a priori, there is no good reason’ for a ban that she considers to be ‘a small thing’. Gili emphasised the fact that the projects are looked at ‘with great rigour’ and that this is the possible reason why ‘some of them have not been approved as the developers wanted’. Per això, va voler matisar que d’aquestes 37 n’hi hi ha ‘algunes que són d’una dimensió superimportant’.
However, the councillor said that the community has not ‘noticed’ this decline and that they continue to perceive a ‘continued interest in building’ in the parish. Gili was also unable to specify how large the applications were, whether they were for buildings, villas or semi-detached houses.
