The Barcelona Education Consortium - formed by the Generalitat and the City Council - and the Congregation of the Oratory of Sant Felip Neri have reached an agreement for the rental of the spaces in the center that will allow the withdrawal of the special urban plan initiated by the government municipality that contemplated its expropriation for the continuity of the Sant Felip Neri School Institute.
The Minister of Education and President of the Consorci, Anna Simó, and the First Deputy Mayor, Laia Bonet, remarked this Monday that this agreement will allow the continuity of the center in its current location during the 2023-2024 academic year as part of the public network and expansion of facilities.
Anna Simó has expressed satisfaction with the agreement reached and has stressed that the incorporation of this center into the public network has been a "challenge", and Laia Bonet has highlighted that it is a rental agreement for 20 years. The Barcelona City Council had approved in March an urban plan that laid the foundations for expropriating the buildings of the Sant Felip Neri school that are owned by the Congregació de l'Oratori de Sant Felip Neri, which established that the plots would pass to public ownership number 3, 4 and 6 of the Sant Felip Neri square, which now stops.
According to the agreement reached, the spaces available to the center are increased by 1,133 square meters as a result of the incorporation of the Casa del Gremi dels Sabaters and the ground floor of the convent. The school institute will open on September 6, the day the course begins, in the current facilities and the Congregació de l'Oratori de Sant Felip Neri will make the other agreed spaces available to the center before June 1, 2024.
Bonet has stated that these new spaces, which will be launched progressively from the 2024-2025 academic year and will be fully operational in 2025-2026, will give "oxygen" to the educational project of the center. The deputy mayor celebrated that it was possible to reach an agreement and avoid expropriation, a scenario that "was of no interest to anyone" and that put the start of the course at risk, to which is added the fact that it meant an increase in costs.
The school institute will be integrated into the public network in the 2023-2024 academic year, with 359 students, and the Consorci d'Educació will carry out some reforms during the month of August to adapt it to the current regulations of public centers: both in the building of the Plaza Sant Felip Neri, where the Infant and Primary courses are located, like those on Carrer de la Palla, where the ESO courses are.
Likewise, a tender will be launched to commission the design of the project that will reorganize all the spaces that the center will have thanks to the agreement, and the estimated global investment to definitively adapt the equipment is 4 million euros, financed by the City Council .
