Compromís warns of a shortfall of up to 380 care-home places for the elderly in Sagunto
Compromís (a Valencian left-wing party) is calling on Sagunto City Council to reserve municipal land for new elderly care homes, citing a shortfall of 330 to 380 places and waiting lists of up to four years.
Sagunto needs between 330 and 380 additional care-home places for elderly residents, according to figures put forward by Compromís. Municipal group spokeswoman Maria Josep Picó has described the situation as a genuine social emergency and has asked the City Council to reserve municipal land to make it easier to build new care homes, citing an ageing population and rising demand.
Although responsibility for elderly care falls under the regional government, the Generalitat Valenciana, Compromís believes the council must act decisively. Picó has warned that many local families face waiting lists of up to four years and prices she calls excessive, in a town that currently has only one public care home for the elderly.
The party's calculations are based on a recommendation it attributes to the World Health Organization, setting a minimum of five care-home places per 100 people aged over 65. Compromís estimates Sagunto has around 68,000 residents, of whom roughly 20% -about 13,600 people- are over that age, putting the town's overall need at around 680 places.
According to the party's figures, the urban area of Sagunto and Puerto de Sagunto currently has between 300 and 350 places spread across public, subsidised and private centres, leaving a municipal shortfall of between 330 and 380 places, the figure behind the party's complaint.
Compromís is calling for municipal land to be protected to make way for new care homes and, in particular, to expand the public offering, in a town that has seen notable population growth in recent years, partly linked to new industry moving in. The party is also asking the Generalitat Valenciana to provide the investment needed to expand care-home capacity, and argues that boosting public provision should become a shared priority for both levels of government.
The debate over care-home places for the elderly is not unique to Sagunto: population ageing is a widespread trend across much of the Camp de Morvedre district and the Valencian Community as a whole, where the share of people over 65 has grown steadily over the past decade. In a medium-sized town like Sagunto, that ageing trend coexists with an opposite phenomenon: an influx of younger residents linked to new industry -PowerCo, Parc Sagunt and other electric-vehicle-related projects- forcing the council to plan simultaneously for two demographic groups with very different needs, from nursery schools to care homes for the elderly.
Compromís is not the only party to have focused on housing and social services in the town in recent months: the group has made the lack of available public land one of its recurring arguments, alongside its calls for more subsidised housing. That overlap between the two demands -land for care homes and land for affordable housing- is no coincidence, according to Picó, since both stem from the same underlying problem: finding available municipal plots at a time of intense pressure on land use driven by the town's industrial and population growth. The party argues that, without decisive short-term action, the gap between available places and real demand will keep widening as Sagunto's population continues to age and grow at the same time.
Other municipal parties have not yet commented on Compromís's specific proposal, although the lack of care-home places for the elderly has come up repeatedly at recent council plenary sessions, usually linked to questions about the state of waiting lists and possible support with rent or home care for families unable to find a place in a centre.
Compromís has also announced it will bring its proposal to the next council plenary session as a formal motion, so that the other groups have to state their position on reserving land for new care homes.
The City Council has said it will send a written response to Compromís's motion before the next ordinary plenary session takes place.
The party has also asked that the response include a concrete timetable for action, rather than just a generic assessment of the proposal.
The spokeswoman stressed that population ageing, combined with Sagunto's growing number of residents, obliges the council to dedicate resources to building public care homes for the elderly, and called for coordinated action between administrations to improve care for this group. So far, the City Council has not publicly responded to Compromís's proposal to reserve land. According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional background from elperiodic.com.