The Government will approve next Tuesday the declaration of general interest of the future Clínic-Universitat de Barcelona (UB) Health Campus and the Health Campus of the Girona Health Region. Thus, the Government will give absolute political and institutional priority to two strategic projects that will transform Catalonia’s hospital, teaching, and research system. “The goal is for them not to have to overcome so many bureaucratic obstacles and to accelerate urban and energy procedures so that they become a reality as soon as possible. These are two national projects,” said the Generalitat’s Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau. In this regard, he detailed that there are two different timelines: “First, the new Girona health campus is undergoing transformation, and later the new Clínic campus.”
Read more ‘The House of Music’ on RTVE: Christmas Eve in May
These two actions, they indicate, will give new impetus to healthcare, training, and biomedical innovation and will consolidate Catalonia as one of the main European hubs in health and life sciences. The declaration of general interest will have concrete effects on its execution. In the energy field, it will reinforce their access to priority processing regarding connection permits and an allocation of capacity in the electrical grid, which is planned at the state level. This is especially relevant considering that large healthcare and research facilities require high energy power.
The Executive Council will also ratify on Tuesday the declassification of the UB lands on Avenida Diagonal, so they will no longer be considered public domain assets linked to the university service and can be acquired by the Generalitat to allocate them to the future Clínic campus. At the beginning of the year, they already signed an agreement for the Generalitat to acquire these properties for 135 million euros. The future campus will include the new hospital, the UB Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and more healthcare, university, scientific, and research facilities. It will group 300,000 m² of healthcare, teaching, and research to position Barcelona among the main biomedical hubs worldwide.
Additionally, the prior announcement of the international project competition that will shape the campus has also been published, the step before the call, scheduled for September. This process aims to attract the best proposals and ideas from architecture and engineering professionals worldwide to draft the architectural and urban implementation project of the different functional programs of the future campus. The first phase, with team presentations and technical accreditation, will take place between September and November. Then there will be two elimination stages: one with 10 teams to develop initial proposals until April 2027, and a second with five teams and detailed proposals until December. The winner will be decided in the first quarter of 2028 and will be awarded a contract of about 134 million euros.
The participating teams will have to be multidisciplinary, with profiles in architecture, engineering, sustainability, energy efficiency, medical equipment, etc., to guarantee an innovative, functional, and humanized project. The jury will be composed of architects, engineers, and a CatSalut representative with the support of more than 35 technicians and institutional, medical, and municipal representatives. This urban operation will involve creating a mixed urban environment, with housing, facilities, green spaces, and economic activity linked to life sciences. The criteria include improving accessibility with a wide public transport offer, the new Line 3 metro station, and the transformation of major road infrastructures.
The declaration of general interest, the declassification of the lands, and the publication of the prior announcement mean, highlight the Presidency, three key advances to meet the operational start in 2035 and the overall investment of about 1.7 billion euros.
Read more Bulgaria beats Israel in Eurovision, which does not close the door to Russia’s return
Campus in Girona
Regarding the Health Campus of the Girona Health Region, last Friday, the Generalitat awarded the architectural project to the UTE PINEARQ, SLP & Brullet de Luna y asociados and SLP & PEGI Engineering, SL, the proposal that, under the slogan Devesa de Salut 21, had obtained the highest score in the ideas competition, as explained in March in Girona.
Once the company has submitted all the required documentation and there has been no opposition from the other bidders, the project has been awarded and the contract signed. Now the winning team has two years to draft the preliminary project and the basic and executive projects of the complex. The future campus, planned on land between Girona and Salt, will include the new Doctor Josep Trueta University Hospital of Girona, as well as new teaching, research, and innovation spaces promoted by the UdG. Additionally, there will be a hub of healthcare companies. This planning of the new Health Campus will favor synergies between care, training, research, and innovation.
The planned investment is 740 million euros, and the campus will be developed over an area of 175,000 m² of land, of which 130,000 m² are classified as facilities, with a buildable capacity of up to 320,000 m2, and the rest is green space integrated into the campus. The functional plan for healthcare uses foresees between 170,000 and 175,000 m² for the new hospital, which will be added to the current 50,000 m2 of the Martí i Julià Hospital Park. Also planned are 59,725 m2 for university, research, and innovation uses, and more than 80,000 m² are reserved for future growth to ensure its viability.
The new hospital complex will increase from 19 operating rooms between Trueta and Santa Caterina to 31 and up to 33 with the reserve space. Interventional areas will increase from 12 rooms at Trueta to 18, or 24 with the reserve. The 674 beds in the hospitalization area, including conventional, critical, semi-critical, adult, and pediatric, will increase to 791 and up to 855 at maximum, and the 84 emergency boxes will increase to 136 or 162 at maximum occupancy.
Read more Venezuela hands over Alex Saab to the United States, alleged frontman for Maduro
