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The Palacio de Congresos conference centre in Torremolinos, inaugurated in 1970, has two administrations, one is the central one, as the building is state-owned, attached to the Spanish tourism authority (Turespaña), and the other is the municipal one, as it is the town hall, which is responsible for its management. Until 2016, a fully municipally-owned commercial company was in charge of this, but it was dissolved due to the debts it accumulated.
The local government is now working to ensure that the site is also included in the inventory of the municipality's assets and, as a result of talks with Turespaña, significant progress has already been made in this regard. Last January, the request was formalised, after numerous previous contacts, by means of a letter from the mayor, Margarita del Cid, addressed to the secretary of state for tourism, Rosario Sánchez Grau.
In her letter, Del Cid said that the conference and trade fair centre has a series of "immediate material needs that limit its capacity for attraction and exploitation". Faced with this, the town hall proposes its purchase in order to make the necessary investments and ensure that the centre takes advantage of all the potential it offers, and not only for Torremolinos, as it is a very valuable resource for Greater Malaga and the rest of the province. Having received the letter, the secretary of state for tourism, who welcomes the idea (the Torremolinos centre is the only one of its kind that still remains), warned that the treasury must assess the value of this asset in order to be able to talk about a correct purchase price. In the next few days, the person in charge of carrying out this report will arrive in the town, as confirmed to SUR, which means that the negotiations have made further progress.
Once figures are on the table, Torremolinos will make its financial proposal, with the aim of completing the transfer as soon as possible. In fact, as municipal sources point out, given that it is a large-scale operation, there is already talk that the new phase of the conference centre, which will then be municipally owned, may involve a "collaborative" management model - both to undertake its modernisation, which will require a significant financial investment, and to maximise its profitability.
This is not the first time that this idea has been proposed. During the first term of socialist mayor José Ortíz (from 2015 to 2019), faced with the need to carry out improvements that were already clearly necessary, a substantial municipal debt, and with Turespaña also making it clear that it could not take on this refurbishment, there was an attempt to involve business groups to address this need. In fact, it was even announced that the historic building was going to be put out to tender. Intu, owner of several adjoining plots of land, and Meliá announced that they were interested in bidding.
The conference centre, in addition to being a great asset for the local economy, is an architectural jewel, designed by Rafael de la Hoz and Gerardo Olivares James. It features spectacular elements, such as its chandelier, and showcases a clear functionalist and avant-garde style, with distinctly brutalist traits due to the use of concrete and its resemblance to a seashell.
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