The Valencia City Council has received and is processing a developer’s request for a planning change affecting an urban development of 77 public protection single-family homes planned for the Natzaret neighborhood, which, according to the socialist municipal group, are already all reserved —not commercialized— before the municipal government has even authorized the necessary permits, and in which a private swimming pool and common areas are now intended to be built. “Someone will have to explain it very well,” said the socialist municipal spokesperson, Borja Sanjuan. The local government replies that what is being carried out is a detailed study for the elimination of an interior alleyway that is generated with the urbanization of the plots to which the Generalitat’s swap refers.
Last year, the developer Albaluz was awarded public land in the La Punta neighborhood, next to Valencia’s ZAL, through a tender, as part of the Generalitat Valenciana’s Plan Vive, for the development of 77 single-family homes in exchange for delivering 11 of them —in a land-for-built-housing swap— to the public housing stock of the Generalitat Valenciana.
Socialist councilor Elisa Valía has questioned whether the price of the module for building VPP is fixed and capped: “What interest can a builder have in incurring more production costs that they will not be able to pass on to the people who acquire these single-family homes? Many doubts arise.” On the developer’s website, this promotion appears as “all sold out.”
Sanjuan explained that the municipal group has confirmed that the developer already has these VPP single-family homes reserved “despite the fact that the promotion has not been advertised nor does it have the City Council’s endorsement to build.” “They have been reserved without a fixed price, which I don’t know if that’s something people usually do when buying a home,” he stated. Therefore, he announced that his group will present objections to the planning change proposed by the developer so that “neither the privatization of the streets that are proposed and must be public nor the planning change to build single-family homes with a swimming pool” is authorized.
The socialist spokesperson detailed that this development in Natzaret, for which no single-family homes remain available, according to the developer after consultation, is the result of a swap by the Generalitat Valenciana within the Plan Vive, whereby the developer acquired public land for 77 homes and, in return, delivered 11 of them to the regional administration.
Only two companies submitted bids for the land tender, but one of them did not submit the documentation correctly and was disqualified, so the award went to the developer Albaluz. A procedure, Sanjuan warned, that is repeated in many of the Generalitat’s Plan Vive swaps: “Two companies initially submit bids, but only one of them provides all the documentation correctly,” he highlighted.
Sanjuan stressed that adding a swimming pool, garden, and paddle tennis courts “makes no sense, as it increases construction costs and, above all, maintenance costs.” This is not the only swap denounced by the opposition in Valencia.
In a response note, the local government emphasizes that the City Council has not carried out any swap nor awarded any housing related to the complaint made by the PSPV and insists that “the PSPV’s alleged ‘windfall’ is based on an entire fiction about who they believe will be awarded homes that are not even built.”
According to the council, “to insinuate systemic corruption without proof harms those who are waiting for protected housing the most. Let us work,” and added that a detailed study is now being carried out, in a public information period, for the elimination of an interior alleyway that is generated with the urbanization of the plots to which the Generalitat Valenciana’s swap refers. “Objections are the foreseen administrative mechanism. If they are presented, they will be technically evaluated and the planning will follow its ordinary processing,” the local Executive stated.
The Plan Vive, presented by former president Carlos Mazón in 2024, foresees the construction of 10,000 public protection homes in this legislature, with public-private collaboration as one of its development formulas. This development would be an example, as a private developer is awarded several land lots for VPP and delivers a portion of the finished homes to the Generalitat.
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