Torrevieja Mayor Again Demands N332 Widening Commitment

[Carl]

https://www.informacion.es/vega-baja/20 ... 33377.html

Google translate, minus video and images:

The N-332 in Torrevieja is like Groundhog Day: the mayor again demands that the ministry fulfill its commitment to widen the road

Eduardo Dolón points out that he has requested a meeting with Óscar Puente to address this issue on a hundred occasions without success, and criticizes the minister for his "institutional disregard" and the failure to keep his promise that part of the project would be put out to tender in 2025.

It's like Groundhog Day. The Ministry of Transport has once again completely forgotten, year after year, its commitment to widen the N-332 bypass – the project was awarded under the mandate of Minister José Luis Ábalos. And the mayor of Torrevieja, Eduardo Dolón, in mid-August, when the tourist season makes the year-round daily traffic congestion on this road even more unbearable, is once again criticizing the Government and, in this case, Minister Óscar Puente, who also publicly committed at the end of 2025 to having the works put out to tender and awarded during that year.

One hundred times

Thus, the Torrevieja City Council has once again demanded that the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility put out to tender and carry out the widening of the N-332 as it passes through the municipality, a pending action for which the mayor, Eduardo Dolón, assures that the Council has requested "on more than a hundred occasions" a meeting with the minister, Óscar Puente, or with those responsible for the competent general directorates.

Dolón believes that the lack of dialogue constitutes a " complete disregard," not for the mayor or the City Council, but for the residents of Torrevieja and the thousands of visitors who come to the city. The mayor maintains that this is an infrastructure project of "special and urgent importance" and argues that its completion is essential to improve road safety and mobility and address one of the municipality's main communication problems.

Daily traffic

The mayor has once again intensified his criticism of the state of a road that, according to data provided by the City Council, carries over 60,000 vehicles daily, with even higher figures during holiday periods. The Council points out that this traffic volume results in frequent congestion, longer travel times, and difficulties entering and exiting Torrevieja.

Dolón describes as "third-world" the fact that a city with the population, economic activity, and tourist traffic of Torrevieja continues to depend on an overcrowded road without the works to expand its capacity having even been put out to tender. He also considers it "absolutely shameful" that, after years of demands and commitments, the central government has still not launched the bidding process.

In this regard, the mayor directly blames the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, for the situation, attributing to them the blocking of an action that the municipality has been demanding for years.

The commitment to put the works out to tender in 2025

Dolón also recalls the commitment expressed by Puente in 2024 during a forum organized by the newspaper INFORMACIÓN, in which the minister publicly announced the intention to put the works for the duplication of the national road out to tender during 2025.

The mayor maintains that the announcement has proven false and accuses the minister of breaking his word. According to Dolón, Torrevieja continues to suffer daily traffic jams without the government providing any dates, deadlines, or explanations regarding the infrastructure project.

Adding to this situation is the lack of response to the meeting requests sent by the City Council. Dolón asserts that, despite having sent over a hundred requests, none have resulted in a meeting with a political or technical official from the Ministry capable of explaining the project's status.

According to the mayor, the only responses received have come from the minister's office and are limited to administrative acknowledgments of the repeated requests for a meeting. Dolón maintains that, apart from these responses, no ministerial official has addressed the issue directly with the City Council.

"Fed up" with the breaches

The mayor says he is "fed up with the lies, the broken promises and the institutional contempt" that he attributes to the Spanish Government towards Torrevieja and questions how much longer residents and visitors will have to endure a situation that, in his opinion, harms the mobility, safety and economic and tourist development of the municipality.

Dolón maintains that the City Council will continue demanding the road widening project until the Ministry puts the works out to tender and carries them out. The mayor rejects further "excuses," "silence," and "broken promises," and demands that the Government immediately put the project out to tender and provide Torrevieja with what he considers adequate and safe transportation links.

History

Torrevieja has been waiting for this project for over two decades. The municipality was left out of the widening of the same road in its Guardamar and Orihuela Costa and Pilar de la Horadada sections in 2008 due to the difficulties in finding sufficient public land for easements, which disappeared during the urbanization process of the municipality in previous decades.

Later, the Generalitat (the Catalan regional government) assumed responsibility for the preliminary and final design plans. These plans were repeatedly returned by the central government — under both Zapatero and Rajoy — to the regional administration with over a dozen serious deficiencies, precisely because of the technical and environmental challenges of fitting the road into a ring road built in the 1980s with one lane in each direction, but now squeezed between housing developments. Finally, under the Botànic coalition government, the Generalitat abandoned the project, and the Ministry approved its drafting in 2018. Seven years passed until, in early 2025, the Ministry of Public Works approved the environmental impact assessment for the chosen alternative, which, moreover, only covers a single section of about four kilometers — the most congested stretch between the CV-95 at the Hospital and the CV-905. Both during Mariano Rajoy's government and in the current one, the implementation of the duplication has been included almost symbolically in some annual installments of the General State Budget. And this continues to this day.

[Brandyboy]

That should get the ball rolling.

[Carl]

That should get the ball rolling.

Local elections in May, which I guess is why the Mayor is looking for some warm words of reassurance that he can share with residents.

[Brandyboy]

That should get the ball rolling.

Local elections in May, which I guess is why the Mayor is looking for some warm words of reassurance that he can share with residents.

The problem is that that section of the 332 beween the Habaneras shopping centre and the exit for the hospital is going to be a complete nightmare to dual, so it's understandable for the reluctancy for any commitment.

[Carl]

That should get the ball rolling.

Local elections in May, which I guess is why the Mayor is looking for some warm words of reassurance that he can share with residents.

The problem is that that section of the 332 beween the Habaneras shopping centre and the exit for the hospital is going to be a complete nightmare to dual, so it's understandable for the reluctancy for any commitment.

An expensive nightmare at €55m for just 4.47 kms, and the longer it's delayed the more it will cost.

[Carl]

PSOE Torrevieja offers Mayor conditional support to progress project.

https://www.informacion.es/vega-baja/20 ... 89786.html

Google translate, minus video and images, and embedded tweet:

The PSOE offers to join forces for the N-332 in Torrevieja despite the underlying problem: the duplication is not possible due to a lack of land that has been occupied by construction companies.

The Socialists are demanding that the Ministry of Óscar Puente give priority to the duplication project, but they point out that the route was constrained by urban development plans authorized by the City Council.

The PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) in Torrevieja has confirmed its willingness to collaborate on the N-332 highway widening project to move it forward , following recent statements by Mayor Eduardo Dolón (PP - People's Party). Socialist spokesperson Bárbara Soler, responding to the mayor's public demand to Minister Óscar Puente to put the long-awaited works out to tender, stated that her party will support any procedure that unblocks the project, although she rejects what she considers the People's Party's political exploitation of the issue.

"Eduardo Dolón is demanding the widening of the N-332 highway in the middle of August. And why? Because it must be done. The problem is most evident in the summer. And we fully share his desire for it to be widened," admits the Socialist spokesperson.

The Socialists attribute the project's main problem to the urban planning conditions of the section, which are making it very difficult to approve a final construction plan. They point out that the road, built as a bypass in the 1980s, became enclosed within urban development plans, and that the City Council failed to reserve the legally required easement margins mandated by the Highways Act to facilitate a future expansion.

The PSOE believes that the solution does not lie in a succession of recriminations between administrations - the project has been delayed under both PP and PSOE governments in the central government - although it points out that the origin of the problem cannot be ignored when discussing responsibilities.

Preferential

The party prefers to focus the debate on the current state of the process. According to the Socialists, the drafting of the final route is in its final phase, and the project is currently undergoing documentation review. From this point, they argue that the priority should be to demand that the project be given preferential status. The Spanish government plans to invest 55 million euros to widen 4.47 kilometers of the N-332, which is only part of the eight kilometers to be widened. Soler recalled that this section has always been the one planned, even under the previous PP government at the Ministry. The section between the CV-95 and CV-905 is particularly complex due to the limited space available and the potential impacts of the widening.

The PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) is calling for responsible adherence to deadlines, given the project's technical and urban planning challenges. They also criticize the PP (People's Party) for demanding speed when, according to the Socialists, both the Torrevieja local government and the Valencian regional government have repeatedly missed deadlines on other major projects. This is a clear allusion, though not explicitly mentioned, to the widening of the CV-95 highway itself.

They also question whether Eduardo Dolón's demand for a meeting with the ministry is to address the impact of the route on local projects.

The Socialists affirm that they will continue to support any initiative that serves to promote the widening of the N-332 highway. They indicate their willingness to collaborate when it comes to advancing the project, not when the issue is used to gain political advantage, weaken the opposition, or maintain a partisan discourse.

The Greens and the corruption of Hernández Mateo

Regarding the lack of available land, which has delayed the environmental assessment and the development of alternatives since the project's drafting was awarded in 2018, the Green Party, which has no representation on the City Council, reiterated its position on the matter this past Saturday. They asserted that the City Council has for years violated the Highways Act, which requires a 100-meter easement from the centerline of a state-owned road to be respected for future development. The municipality managed to get the State to reduce this requirement to just 25 meters. The Green Party directly points to the person responsible for this narrowing of the right-of-way to widen the road from one lane in each direction to two: the mayor, Pedro Hernández Mateo, who was convicted of corruption and allowed the developers to proceed.

According to this version of events, which was also maintained during his term by the Green Party mayor José Manuel Dolón, the occupation of these easements allowed developers to acquire more land for housing. However, on the ground, in the section now planned, this isn't exactly the case. What can be seen at a glance in Villa Amalia, the Mediterráneo partial plan, and El Paraíso is that the developers, with municipal approval, planned the green spaces on the easement land designated for the road widening project, thus obtaining a double benefit: complying with the legal requirement for green spaces by including an easement they should have respected, and increasing their total buildable area through this practice.

The current duplication project has forced the consideration of public land for the duplication, such as the cemetery parking lot, to fit the section, or to sacrifice green space and make intricate adjustments, especially when designing the exit and acceleration lanes.

Only a few specific residential areas are directly affected by a road that will be built very close to them: in the Acequión expansion area, with apartment blocks and a swimming pool on Villa Madrid or Ciudad de Barcelona streets, right at the 25-meter limit, or next to the exit lane with the Altos del Edén blocks, barely five meters away. There, the road widening and its auxiliary access roads will fit by the skin of their teeth.

The widening project can go ahead because the platform and embankment of the current road itself, negotiated by the first female mayor of the democratic period, Rosa Mazón, has a much greater width than required for two lanes on a conventional road.