Quart de les Valls puts renovation of municipal swimming pools out to tender for €345,000
Quart de les Valls, a municipality in the Camp de Morvedre district, has put out to tender a full renovation of its municipal swimming pools for almost €345,000, with bids due by 8 September.
Swimming in Quart de les Valls should become safer and more accessible from the coming summer seasons onwards: the town has just taken the administrative step needed to start a full renovation of its pool complex. The town council has published the tender documents, and interested companies have until 8 September to submit their technical and financial bids, with a spending cap set at €344,900, VAT included.
As with any public works tender in Spain, submitting a bid is only the first step: after 8 September, a contracting board will have to assess each company's technical proposal — how it plans to carry out the project's four phases — as well as its financial bid, before proposing who should be awarded the contract. Only once the contract is formally signed with the winning company can work actually begin. It is the same administrative process followed by small town councils across the Camp de Morvedre district whenever they take on an investment of this size, with the same transparency and public-spending checks used in the larger councils of the district.
The work is organised around four areas. First, the pools themselves: both the main pool and the children's pool will drop their conventional drainage in favour of an overflow system, a technology that keeps the water level at the very edge of the pool and constantly recirculates it through the filters, rather than relying only on the bottom drains typical of older pools; the practical result is faster, more even water renewal, with fewer spots where surface dirt can build up. Second, filtration: the treatment and chlorination equipment will be fully replaced, and the chemical products — currently kept next to the pool — will move to a separate, safer storage building for both swimmers and maintenance staff.
Third, accessibility, one of the weak points flagged in the project: a water lift, an adapted access staircase, four extra standard staircases, twelve new showers and a fence around the small pool to protect younger users will all be added. This is not a cosmetic choice: many of the municipal pools built decades ago in Camp de Morvedre towns had neither water lifts nor adapted access, because universal accessibility standards have tightened over the years. Bringing them up to date means older residents or people with reduced mobility — a group that carries proportionally more weight in a town of a thousand people than in a large city — won't be left unable to use a public facility paid for with their taxes.
Regional regulations on public swimming pools in the Valencian Community require town councils to keep their filtration, disinfection and safety systems up to date, and it is routine health inspections that usually flag when a facility starts falling below those standards. Ultimately, it is that regulatory framework that pushes small municipalities like Quart de les Valls to take on renovations of this scale, even when they represent a significant strain on the local budget.
Fourth, energy efficiency: 15 LED lamps of 60 watts spread across 11 columns and a newly built general electrical panel will replace the current setup, cutting both the complex's night-time electricity use and the risk of faults in ageing wiring.
Because the work is being carried out on facilities that already exist, the council has stressed that it will not affect the site's planning status or the area immediately around the pools. The mayor, Lara González, summed up the reasoning behind the project in three points: bringing the pools up to functional standard, raising safety and hygiene levels, and lowering day-to-day maintenance costs over time.
Put in perspective, the outlay shows what this project means for a small municipality: Quart de les Valls has 1,029 residents — according to the 2025 register — spread across just 8.4 square kilometres, so almost €345,000 represents one of the largest items in this year's municipal budget. González Asensi has led the local government since 2023 with a PSPV-PSOE (Valencian socialist party) administration, the same party that also runs much of the Camp de Morvedre district.
Municipal pool use across the comarca (district) is concentrated into just a few months a year, a challenge shared by most towns in Camp de Morvedre: keeping a facility running all year round when it only generates activity — and, where applicable, season-ticket income — during summer means reforms have to be carefully planned so they don't swallow several budget years at once. That is why the works are timed with a clear goal: finishing before the next bathing season starts, once the contract is awarded and the work begins. According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional background from Wikipedia on Quart de les Valls.