The Medi TV Mediterráneo program “La Panderola”, which deals with issues of local and provincial interest, today interviewed the urban architect Víctor García Gil. The interview, motivated by the turbulent and exhausting path that a town of less than a hundred residents of Castellón has had to follow until it got final approval of its master plan, has allowed us to talk about the difficulties inherent in this type of action. Faced with the perplexity and indignation of the interviewer, motivated by the punishment that such a procedure entails for any small municipality, the architect has tried to unravel some of the reasons that explain this situation.
The Torrechiva Master Plan was known for being the first planning adapted to the Valencian urban framework, dating from 2014. The structural part of the plan was approved in 2019 and the detailed part in 2021, that is, seven years after it came into force of the current Valencian urban legislation. The review of the planning, however, began in 2002 from some first drafts prepared by another team. In 2016, after 14 years of processing, with two technical teams involved and who had abandoned the assignment, the city council decided to hire AUG-ARQUITECTOS SLP for the necessary work to “resurrect” a file that seemed dead and had been paralyzed for several years. In just three years, not only was regional approval achieved, but it was done starting from scratch and completely adapting the plan to the new legal framework. And this was only possible because all the agents involved pushed in the same direction: the city council, placing its trust in the drafting team and collaborating in all the procedures; the drafting team committing itself to everything necessary (technical work and processing) to achieve the set objective and the Autonomous Administration, through exemplary speed and support, by the Castellón Territorial Urban Planning Service. Only teamwork, which is not always achieved, allowed him to carry out a plan that, when he was hired, seemed doomed to failure.
You can see the full interview on the Medi TV YouTube channel (minute 10:18).