The Platform for Quality Public Healthcare in the Department of Torrevieja made public yesterday, Thursday 17th September, an analysis of the regional healthcare budgets between 2023 and 2026. The data confirms that the actual investment executed at Torrevieja Hospital during this current mandate, which is now entering its final stretch, amounts to barely 1.1 million euro. This figure contrasts with the 175 million announced last week by the president of the Generalitat, a promise whose execution will not begin to materialise until several years from now, as denounced outside the entrance to Outpatient Consultations at the University Hospital by Manuel Gómez and Eva Delafuente, spokespersons for the group, who had the support of around thirty users of the health department.
In 2023, the regional government included an item of 11 million euro for the expansion of the hospital. The current executive reduced that amount to 1.1 million in 2024. In 2025, no investment was executed. The 2026 budgets now reflect an estimated total cost of 53.6 million, but the funds for its execution are shifted to 2028 and 2029.
The effective spending over four years is limited to that initial 1.1 million, which is equivalent to an investment of just 1.2 euro per person per year in a department with a protected population exceeding 225,000 inhabitants across ten municipalities on the coast and second line of the Vega Baja coast. Those gathered branded the Consell announcement as “selling smoke” now that the regional elections are approaching in May 2027.
According to official figures from the Generalitat, that degree of investment would be slightly higher: during this year, temporary expansions of outpatient consultations and rehabilitation are being carried out at the hospital at a cost of 2.6 million, according to the Generalitat. In addition, the health centre usually adds investments in the renewal of medical equipment to these actions that are ascribed more to the current expenses chapter, such as dialysis monitoring, respirators, surgical arcs and the new analysis laboratory, which add up to more than ten million in investment over these last four years.
The situation in primary care follows the same pattern of paralysis, as Gómez reiterated. The expansion of the Guardamar Health Centre, budgeted at 6.1 million in 2023 with a completion date of 2025 and for which the Town Hall ceded the plot with the demolition of the building it occupied, has accumulated “zero euro executed”. The project has been postponed until 2028 and its cost has been reduced.
The second Health Centre in Orihuela Costa, with 4.8 million initially budgeted, has seen its allocation disappear from the 2025 and 2026 budgets because the Orihuela municipality assures that it will assume it at its own cost. Meanwhile, the renovations of Torrevieja-La Loma and San Miguel de Salinas are limited to allocations of 50,000 and 15,000 euro, respectively, intended exclusively for drafting projects, without any work having been started.
The platform points out that Torrevieja Hospital has had the same healthcare infrastructure for two decades, despite the fact that the population of the department has doubled since its opening. Following the reversal of the concession from Ribera Salud in October 2021, the urgent works necessary to adapt the venue to current demand remain unexecuted, and the emergency budget allocation was drastically reduced.
Behind this inaction, the platform indicates that there is, in its view, a devaluation of public healthcare and the promotion of a public-private collaboration model. As evidence, they cite the agreement by Orihuela Town Hall to hand over a public plot to a private company to build a hospital, announcements of new private clinics in Orihuela Costa, and the continuation of patient referrals from the public network to private centres in the area.
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