Four new residences for the elderly in Barcelona for a waiting list of more than 15,000 people

BarcelonaThere are more than 15,000 elderly people in a situation of dependency on the waiting list for a place in a public residence in Barcelona, with waiting times ranging between two and three years. Despite this saturation, it has been almost fifteen years since a new public residence was built in Catalonia. This Wednesday, in an attempt to begin to reverse this situation, the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Raúl Moreno, have announced an agreement to build four new public residences in the city, which will provide nearly 500 new places. In addition, each of the centers will have around thirty day center places.

This is a key step towards achieving the Government's goal of providing 6,000 new residential places for the elderly by 2028. Although this is an ambitious goal, the Catalan Association of Assistance Resources (ACRA) states that it is below real needs. The employers' association estimates that Catalonia will need 80,000 more residential places by 2035. Furthermore, in Barcelona, the nearly 500 new places announced will have a limited impact on the current waiting list: they are equivalent to approximately one place for every 30 people waiting to access a public residence. The president of ACRA, Cinta Pascual, has celebrated the agreement as "good news", but has warned that it is not a sufficient project to meet the real demand required by both the current aging of the population and that which is foreseen in the future.

As explained by Collboni, the authorities have prioritized growing neighborhoods, where there is already high demand for access to residences, to choose the areas where these geriatric centers will be built. Specifically, they will be built in Casernes, in the Sant Andreu district; on Viladomat street in Esquerra de l'Eixample; at the intersection of Sovelles and Ulldecona streets in Marina del Prat Vermell, and in Glòries, next to the new ONA space. As explained by Collboni, the four new residences are in addition to the one under construction since last year on Benavent street, in Les Corts, which will offer 80 residential places and 30 day center places. Collboni expects all these new geriatric centers to be completed before 2031.

"We want aging not to imply uprooting", stressed the mayor, who emphasized that, at present, in Barcelona it is not easy for the elderly to age near their homes. “The right to stay is not just for young people, it is also the right to age in your city", stressed Collboni. The project is part of the agreement to strengthen the public network of residences for the elderly in Barcelona between the Generalitat and the City Council. "We are suffering a demographic change that forces us to rethink social cohesion policies”, explained Moreno. In fact, in the Catalan capital, more than 21% of the population is over 65 years old – a percentage that, according to the current demographic model, will continue to increase in the coming decades–. "We have to press the accelerator and make up for lost time", demanded Moreno.

A collaboration to speed up procedures

All of this is part of an agreement between the Generalitat and the City Council that, according to Collboni and Moreno, will serve to speed up procedures and reduce the bureaucratic process so that the service can be launched "as quickly as possible". The City Council will manage the tendering and construction of the works through Barcelona d'Infraestructures Municipals (BIMSA), the municipal company for work coordination. The project, however, will be supervised by a monitoring committee and financed by the Generalitat. Once launched, the management of the centers will be the responsibility of the Generalitat.

Regarding the calendar, the Casernes project is the most advanced: next year the drafting of the project and the tendering of the works will begin. The rest of the residences are in preliminary phases, and the first steps of studying the urban environment have yet to begin. Regarding the budget, Moreno estimates that each center will require an investment of between approximately 12 and 13 million euros, although the exact figures will not be announced until the technical projects are drawn up.