News
Puerto Chico prepares a 14.1-million refurbishment after regularising its streets
Puerto Chico has overcome one of the main obstacles which for years prevented the renewal of its streets and spaces between blocks. Madrid City Council has regularised the Latina district estate in planning terms and is preparing an intervention over more than 64,000 square metres, with a planned investment of 14.1 million euros until 2029.
The problem was not solely the deterioration of pavements or paving. Some of the spaces used daily as streets, gardens or thoroughfares remained in a complex legal situation and were not correctly recorded as municipal land, which prevented the City Council from investing in them as it would in any other public road.
The scale of the problem is clear in the Puerto Chico records. A plot of more than 27,000 square metres was linked through undivided shares to the owners of 2,058 homes and 43 commercial premises. There were also discrepancies between the physical reality, the Cadastre, the Land Registry and the planning approved decades earlier.
The Special Plan intended to resolve this situation received final approval from the municipal plenary session on 24 March. With this regularisation, the City Council can move towards a redevelopment that will affect a housing estate developed in the 1960s and home to more than 10,900 people.
The Plan Regenera intervention is envisaged in two phases. The first has a budget of 6.3 million euros and includes the so-called “Liveable Route”: a pedestrian axis with more vegetation and meeting spaces, accompanied by a reorganisation of traffic and parking.
The second phase has a further 7.8 million and will focus on paving, lighting, accessibility and mobility. One of the objectives will also be to ensure that emergency vehicles can properly access areas where the current layout of the spaces between blocks makes passage difficult.
The transformation of the streets will be accompanied by measures affecting the buildings themselves. Puerto Chico is once again included in the 2026 Plan Transforma tu Barrio, which sets aside 500,000 euros to subsidise improvements to accessibility, maintenance, energy efficiency and health conditions in the properties.
The timetable, however, should be handled with caution. Although the initial plan placed the first phase between 2026 and 2028 and the second between 2027 and 2029, the City Council has not officially confirmed that the main works will begin in the first quarter of 2027 or that they will last exactly twenty months. The most recent municipal information states that the street regeneration works will begin “in the coming months”.
While this broader intervention is being prepared, specific measures have already been carried out in the area and procedures related to residential rehabilitation are continuing. The next decisive step will be to know the specific start date for the works that will alter Puerto Chico’s public spaces.