When will the new Girona Health Campus be inaugurated?

Salto / GironaTwenty years ago, the then Minister of Health, Marina Geli, presented a model of the expansion of the major referral hospital for the Girona region: the Doctor Josep Trueta Hospital. The plan was for it to open in 2008, just as the economic crisis hit, but only three years later, the date was already being pushed back to 2015-2016. A decade has passed since then, along with a relocation of the facilities next to the Martí i Julià Hospital Park – better known as Santa Caterina – and a new timeline that places the opening of the new Girona Health Campus in 2031. Despite the agreement between institutions and the commitment that there is "nothing right now that will delay the schedule," doctors in Girona are questioning this timeline due to ongoing technical difficulties and "accumulated delays."

In a conversation with ARA from the Government headquarters in Girona, Ferran Cordón, a doctor and coordinator of the Girona Health Campus, called for "overcoming old fears that are preventing progress" and looking ahead. On Wednesday, the Campus's Permanent Group, the team that oversees adherence to the schedule, met for the third time after starting the year with a new setback: the unfavorable and binding report from the State regarding the traffic and noise studies conducted by the Salt City Council on the access to the complex from the southern exit of the AP-7 motorway. Both Cordón and the Secretary General of the Presidency, Eva Giménez Corrons, emphasized that everyone is working together to ensure that "the project becomes a reality within the established deadlines."

The expectation is that the winning architectural firm of the design competition will finally be announced in early March. They will then have two years to develop the Health Campus project. that Salt will have its new urban development plan approved in June, and that by the end of 2027, according to Cordón's calculations, "the first machine will be seen working."

Unlike two decades ago, it is no longer just a matter of expanding a hospital in northern Girona, but of an immense complex of 175,000 square meters – 88% of them in the municipality of Salt – which will also include the faculties of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy of the UdG, hub Businesses in the healthcare sector. With the procedures for the new Hospital Clínic moving full steam ahead in Barcelona, ​​the setback of the two unfavorable reports from the State on the urban development project in Salt has once again generated nervousness, especially among healthcare professionals.

Members of the Girona-Nou Trueta Health Campus Observatory, created in 2022 to act as a lobby to ensure the project continues and is completed, expressed their sadness and disappointment on Tuesday at this latest setback. They also welcomed the fact that the Catalan government is already working closely with the Salt City Council, given that the project is of enormous scale and far exceeds the technical capabilities of a single municipality, according to spokesperson Josep Vilaplana, president of the Girona Medical Association. In this regard, Cordón announced that the Catalan government will now have a four-person technical team, including an architect and a civil engineer, to assist the municipalities with any bureaucratic hurdles. The main project involves the subdivision and redevelopment of the affected area in Girona, around the Masrocs stream—on the other side of the Mas Xirgu industrial park—and Mas Masó. In the case of Salt, the entire urban development plan will be revised from scratch, creating a new sector that will encompass one million square meters. "Salt will grow by 30% in terms of urbanized area," explains Àlex Barceló, Deputy Mayor for Territory. "One of our objectives is for this sector to bring the economic activity that Salt currently lacks and compensate for one of the municipality's structural deficiencies."

The project's render

Twenty years ago, the model of the Trueta expansion in the northern sector of Girona was presented; now it is planned that the render A virtual recreation of the project, which is meant to be "the great transformation of Girona's urban area" in the 21st century, in the words of the city's Deputy Mayor for Ecological Transition and Urban Area, Sergi Font, will be unveiled in early March. It will be the winning design in the ideas competition, with a budget of 700 million euros, and will be developed by one of the five architecture firms—one of them from Girona—that submitted proposals. The competition, however, has already gotten off to a bad start, as the Observatori noted this week. According to the initial schedule, the announcement of the winning project should have been made at the end of the year, but an appeal by one of the teams has postponed the jury meeting until now. "We trust that there will be no further appeals in the upcoming stages," Giménez Corrons stated on Wednesday, "but appeals are part of our rule of law."

The project will be on the table very soon, and according to Cordón in the ARA, the expectation is that it will be signed by the end of April and completed in two years. On the table are the design and urban development not only of the future Trueta Hospital, but also of the future faculties of the University of Girona, the research area, and the hub business (see map). According to the plan, the buildings can have up to eight floors, but only one underground floor due to the risk of flooding. Likewise, 27,000 square meters of parking are planned, including both the space itself and the portion of land contributed by the Girona City Council to the Health Campus.

But beyond this renderThe major debate currently underway is mobility in the area, especially considering the population growth of recent years. The opening of the new Ikea store in Girona, next to the C-65 road that connects the AP-7 motorway with Cassà de la Selva and Sant Feliu de Guíxols, already caused significant traffic jams over the weekend. Adding a large hospital, university, research, and business complex necessitates a complete rethink of mobility in the area, as the State pointed out in its unfavorable report to the Salt City Council—a report prepared and submitted when toll barriers were still in place on the AP-7. According to Cordón, a strong commitment to the public transportation system will be essential so that "the people of Salt and Girona, and those in the surrounding areas, use their cars as little as possible." In Girona, plans include the construction of a new bridge that will connect the Mas Xirgu industrial park with the future Health Campus, crossing the Masrocs stream. The schedule is also proceeding with the victory of the platforms' fight to save Parc VilamitjanaA large green space in Girona that was about to disappear, swallowed up by apartments intended to compensate the owners of the Girona land designated for the new Trueta stadium.

Attracting talent and companies

In this still difficult-to-imagine scenario, a team is already working daily to ensure that, beyond being a hospital and a university, it also becomes a hub for attracting businesses. The Girona Chamber of Commerce has set up a small office in the EUSES building, the University School of Health and Sport of Catalonia. David Coromina, director of the hub of Health and Wellbeing. "Our goal is that the future hub "It needs to work from day one, not just as a physical structure, but as a tangible reality," he says. They are already working with companies from Girona that want to expand their strengths in the healthcare sector, and with companies from elsewhere that are interested in setting up shop in this major area of ​​change, including urban development, which the people of Girona still haven't quite believed will materialize after years of promises.