The PSOE municipal group in Alicante City Council denounced this Tuesday that "the government of Luis Barcala has modified the housing project planned for Ceuta street to implement a model that doubles the private developer's profit and reduces public control over the allocation of housing." The project, initially intended for affordable rental housing, entailed a 6% profit for the developer, while Barcala's new approach, focused on selling the properties, raises the projected constructor's earnings to 15%, according to municipal documentation.
"Barcala has changed a project designed to facilitate access to housing and increase the public housing stock for one that multiplies the private developer's profitability. The mayor has decided it is more profitable to sell public housing than to guarantee affordable rent. That decision benefits the private developer and harms those who have more difficulty accessing housing," denounced socialist councilwoman Silvia Castell. She pointed out that a 60-square-meter apartment in this development "will approach 200,000 euros, while the 90-square-meter one will exceed 260,000 euros, excluding relevant taxes".
Furthermore, Castell warned that the new model also means "a loss of public control over access to housing." "After everything that has happened with Les Naus, it is particularly worrying that the City Council renounces direct control over a public housing project and leaves aspects as sensitive as housing allocation in the hands of the developer," she stated. The process to sell the municipal plot on Ceuta street is currently underway, with the offer submission deadline at the end of this month. In exchange for ceding the municipal plot, the City Council will obtain between 3 and 5 homes out of the approximately 30 planned.
The socialist councilwoman also questioned some decisions made during the processing of the file. In this regard, she recalled that on September 22, 2025, the Municipal Housing Board itself "already noted that future actions, except those planned in San Gabriel, would be developed through public-private collaboration formulas." "If Barcala's government had already decided to abandon the affordable rent project, it is incomprehensible that two months later it commissioned an update of that same project for which 1,815 euros of public money were paid. We want to know who made that decision and why money continued to be spent on a project that was apparently already discarded," she affirmed.
Likewise, Castell expressed concern about the presence in the file of reports signed by municipal architect Francisco Nieto, who is under investigation in the Les Naus case. "After all we are learning about Les Naus, the municipal government should maximize transparency guarantees in any action related to public housing. However, we find ourselves once again with decisions that are difficult to understand and with too many unanswered questions," she added.
In this regard, the PSOE defends the need to "return to the original project to build affordable public rental housing that provides housing resources for working families and the middle class who cannot access the free market and young people who cannot become independent due to rising prices".
