The project includes the creation of new green areas and public spaces with a large boulevard and an urban park.
The council meeting upholds some of the objections submitted by residents and property owners.
La Colonia Infantil de Sabinillas is a well-known site throughout the province of Málaga, as it has hosted summer camps for hundreds of thousands of Málaga children over recent decades. It is also a vital urban space for connecting the town along its seafront.
This central urban area covers seventy thousand square metres and, in addition to the La Colonia Infantil accommodation itself, contains residential buildings that the 1994 PGOU (General Urban Development Plan) declared out of ordinance, green and sports areas that are not accessible to the public, and an abandoned place of worship. It is also a genuine obstacle to urban mobility in Sabinillas and its effective link with Puerto de la Duquesa.
In order to address this long-standing problem in the municipality’s general planning, the Town Hall has put out for public consultation the Preliminary Draft of the Special Internal Reform Plan for La Colonia Infantil, which was approved in June 2022 and which this week has completed the stage for suggestions and objections, so that it can proceed to its strategic environmental assessment.
The aim of this initiative by Manilva’s governing team is to provide a new urban layout that transforms the current obsolescence of the services and facilities in this area and incorporates a more diverse range of uses. This would regenerate the Sabinillas area as a whole and increase its capacity to host productive activities that encourage job creation.
The current PGOU (General Urban Development Plan) already set out, among its general objectives for Sabinillas, the need to reorganise the urban structure to give it continuity as far as the Puerto de la Duquesa area, integrating the empty spaces in between.
The PGOU also identifies the need to organise the seafront by completing a pedestrian promenade and to correct the general shortage of facilities in this important part of the municipality. The development instrument being promoted by the Town Hall therefore also meets the provisions of the general planning.
According to the mayor of Manilva, Mario Jiménez, and as also stated in the aforementioned Preliminary Draft of the Special Internal Reform Plan, «among the priority objectives met by this planning instrument are resolving mobility between Puerto de la Duquesa and Sabinillas, planning transversal access to the coast from Maicandil by overcoming the barrier that the A-7 represents, and providing continuity to the pedestrian promenade».
The mayor stresses that «this project will maintain the current use of the Colonia Infantil, which has historical and social value for Manilva, while making it compatible with the needs of the town of the future, which demands open spaces. These will take the form of an urban and coastal park in Sabinillas, while the economic and financial viability of the urban transformation is ensured by regulating the residential and hotel uses set out in the PGOU».
The Preliminary Draft has been prepared through the municipal Urban Planning Management Office (GEUMA), a municipal public agency that guarantees the participation of all municipal groups in decisions on urban planning activity in Manilva, promoting and expanding the means of dissemination, information and transparency on all matters entrusted to it in its Statutes.
With the instrument designed by GEUMA, says Mario Jiménez, «the requirements of current planning regulations are met, integrating a vital space to give the town room to breathe, rehabilitating, regenerating and renewing a strategic area of urban land, reorganising it, reforming its development and providing it with public facilities for the general common use of all residents. An attempt will also be made to integrate into the layout the Everest and Maicandil buildings («the Colonia towers»), which the PGOU declared out of ordinance, provided that the environment and coastal authorities accept the fair claim of the affected residents».
In short, the aim of this plan is none other than to improve the quality of life of the residents of La Colonia and Sabinillas. To this end, a new public square will be built, streets will be reorganised, and new green areas and communal spaces will be created to encourage community life and the social production of urban space.
