The regional government of Valencia has turned down a plan to build in a flood-prone district of San Miguel de Salinas. The Socialist Party (PSOE) government had authorised the proposal at the request of various construction corporations, and all the municipal officials had given it the green-light. The San Miguel Residents’ Association said that the project envisaged building 76 dwellings and a supermarket on a 26,000-square-metre property.
The current Socialist government in 2020, after taking over the city government, started this urban development project. The SUS-R4 UEF Blue Lagoon Partial Plan made it possible to rezone a part of land that couldn’t be developed. The planned development lies in a valley with a flat bottom and a high danger of flooding. The Territorial Action Plan for Flood danger (PATRICOVA) calls this geomorphological risk. Las Filipinas Street is to the north, the unfinished urban boundary is to the south, the Villamartín private school is to the west, and Calle El Escorial is to the east.
Processing by the city
The partial plan went through the previous municipal processing without any problems. During this process, the “San Miguel Arcángel” Neighbourhood Association’s claims were thrown out. They warned about the risks of flooding in the area, both in the sector and downstream, where the Villamartín golf course is located, which is part of the municipality of Orihuela.
The municipal plenary assembly accepted it with a majority vote, even though the officials’ technical-legal studies all said it was a good idea. They didn’t think about the geomorphological risk of flooding, even though it had been clearly noted on the Patricova maps since 2003 and again in 2015. Once the city process was done, it was delivered to the Conselleria in November 2021 so they could do the strategic environmental assessment.
But in 2025, the Official Gazette of the Generalitat published the unfavourable environmental report of the Partial Improvement Plan for Sector SUS-R4 “UEF Blue Lagoon.” It said that the Patricova regulations do not allow the reclassification of Non-Urbanizable Land affected by flood risk as Urban Land or Developable Land, as the Residents’ Association had claimed at the time.
The resolution also says that the land serves as a “green bridge” for animals and water to flow naturally between residential areas. If it were to be developed, this ecological link would be broken, which would change the landscape and the green infrastructure of the area. The Generalitat (the Valencian regional government) recently released new urban planning resolutions that say the Vega Baja region is already short on water. The project didn’t make it clear what the water supply needs of the planned homes and businesses would be, or where the water would come from in the long term.
The municipal technicians who approved the developer’s request said that the area in question was an underdeveloped “island” and needed to be “consolidated.” Blue Lagoon, the area where the urban development project was supposed to “fill” the remaining undeveloped land, is one of the most chaotic and poorly equipped places to live in the Vega Baja region.
Deals and decisions
The developers wanted to build dozens of residences and a supermarket that was 6,000 square metres big. They used urban planning agreements that required the city to pay them back because they had given up property for public facilities. They also pointed out that the site was classed as urban in the General Urban Development Plan. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, threw out that General Plan, which allowed for the building of 40,000 dwellings, saying it was not sustainable. The developers also said that the rezoning was necessary because their properties, which they are required to keep up, were full of trash and weeds.
Valencian laws of city planning say that new buildings should not be built in places that are likely to flood. The Valencian Territorial Action Plan (PATRICOVA) further says that urban development “may not lead to an increase in the risk of flooding.” It also says that “non-developable land affected by flood hazards may not be reclassified as urban or developable land.” The developers gave the land to the municipality, which is now using it to force the municipality to pay for urban land. This deal goes back more than 15 years. A roundabout was built on the area for €400,000. The City Council used the Data Protection Act to hide the developers’ names by taking them out of public records.
San Miguel de Salinas’s contemporary urban planning included facilities without mentioning the risk at the top of this valley. Orihuela’s planning, on the other hand, describes it as the pattern of a ravine.
