"The Model prison is no longer in Barcelona; Lleida is no less". These are the words of the mayor of Lleida, the socialist Fèlix Larrosa. Yesterday he raised with the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, his intention to give continuity to the Municipal Urban Planning Plan initially approved in 2018 and to update it by removing the penitentiary center of Ponent from the urban plot.
Larrosa explained that Aragonès “has put his hands to his head a bit”. "He has told me that building a prison costs a lot of money," said the mayor of Lleida. However, he insisted that the prison "must leave the city and this is a great demand" for which he required the president "the maximum complicity, the maximum empathy."
In the institutional meeting that Aragonès and Larrosa held yesterday at the Palau de la Generalitat, the mayor of Lleida put on the table about twenty city issues for which he requests collaboration, among them the project of a comprehensive resource center for the women following the example of the Ciba of Santa Coloma de Gramenet.
Larrosa told Aragonés that the Lleida City Council makes land available to the Generalitat to facilitate the construction of 400 social protection homes and asked him for a Rodalies plan to facilitate the recognition of the capital of Lleida in inland Catalonia. “Being the capital generates many opportunities but also servitudes and this is an issue that has not been addressed in recent years,” declared Larrosa. In the economic sphere, he defended the need to promote the agri-food sector and for the Generalitat to exclude the Quatre Pilans area from the Torre Blanca industrial estate.
The Councilor of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, said that "Lleida must play an essential role in the country, in many areas, especially in economic and social development, with opportunities for the whole world".
