With the approval of Decree Law 4/2022, the Valencian legislator introduced a new article in the Revised Text of the Land Use, Urban Planning and Landscape Law, approved by Legislative Decree 1/2021, of June 18 (TRLOTUP), “Article 231 bis. Rehabilitation and recovery of traditional rural centers or vernacular architecture”. This article establishes a regime that facilitates the recovery of this type of nuclei and buildings dispersed on non-urbanizable land, by regulating the possibility that, once the processing of an urban planning instrument with the capacity to do so has been completed, the town councils may grant licenses, “fulfilling the conditions detailed in the corresponding instruments, especially with regard to construction techniques, authenticity of materials, and works or services essential to achieve the environmental and habitability conditions necessary for their use, prioritizing, in any case, their self-sufficiency.”
AUG-ARQUITECTOS, SLP is a leading company in the planning of rural municipalities with a great architectural and ethnological heritage of vernacular architecture, dispersed throughout non-urbanizable land, which is why it was the first consultancy to implement the provisions of article 231.bis of the TRLOTUP in some of the plans it was drafting. One of them, the first, was the General Structural Plan (PGE) of Alpuente, definitively approved together with the annex that develops the aforementioned article, on December 18, 2024. This annex includes 253 specific buildings, on non-urbanizable land, whose possible rehabilitation/restoration will be greatly facilitated with the approval of the PGE, as the granting of licenses to intervene in them will depend on the city council, always with the aim of preserving vernacular architecture in a way compatible with new uses and with the applicable technical regulations.
The approval of the PGE of Alpuente constitutes a milestone in what refers to the recovery of vernacular architecture in the Valencian Community. The introduction in the PGE of the determinations of article 231. bis, when its processing was very advanced (with what this entails) represents the commitment to sustainable urban planning by all the actors who have intervened in the preparation of the plan. It is a further contribution to the conservation of heritage, giving it a use and a meaning, so that it continues to be a cultural and landscape reference.