The Badalona City Council (Barcelonès Nord) will carry out a comprehensive renovation of the Mireia Belmonte municipal swimming pool to completely renew the equipment. This action will involve the adaptation of all the facilities and machinery necessary for the proper functioning of the pool and the renovation of the interior of the building and its structure. The works will begin next September and will last between 12 and 15 months, during which time the pool must remain closed.
The announcement of this action was made this Wednesday morning by the mayor of Badalona, Xavier Garcia Albiol, during a press conference in which the first deputy mayor and councilor for the Treasury and Finance, Internal Resources, also participated. Sports and Security, Juan Fernández. García Albiol has explained that the state of the equipment is totally precarious. "Faced with this unsustainable situation, we have made the decision not to carry out any more actions that are patchwork and to address the problem in an ambitious and realistic way, since, despite the inconvenience that the closure may cause, the solution involves completely renewing the pool and offering thus a quality public service that meets the needs of a city the size of Badalona,” stated the mayor.
Garcia Albiol explained that the facilities are very old and that their natural use, added to the lack of adequate maintenance, has caused the current state of the pool to be very poor and its functional capacity has been lost. In this sense, he has warned that only one of the two motors in the pool's ventilation and air conditioning machine works, which means that if it breaks down, the closure of the facility will have to be brought forward because it is an obsolete system for which spare parts are no longer manufactured and, therefore, cannot be repaired.
Badalona City Council has already completed the technical project and the contract award schedule to renew all the facilities and machinery, which will have an approximate cost of 1,050,000 euros. The work includes the following interventions:
• Adapt the low voltage installation to current regulations.
• Adapt the lighting installation.
• Adapt the air conditioning installation.
• Provide lightning rods in the building.
• Adapt the hydraulic distribution installation to the legionella control regulations.
• Provide the equipment with a water pumping system in case of floods.
• Provide the equipment with an installation of photovoltaic solar panels.
• Adapt the pool chlorination installation to the real needs of the workers.
In addition, work is being done on the quantification of the comprehensive rehabilitation project of all the interior and exterior facilities of the building, which will affect all spaces (changing rooms, stands, common areas, façade and roof). All these actions will be carried out simultaneously with the technical adaptation of the pool, in order to maintain the closure period for works initially planned.
The mayor of Badalona, Xavier Garcia Albiol, considers that the current situation of the pool shows the mess that the City Council has suffered in recent years. “We have found ourselves in a regrettable situation regarding the maintenance of public buildings and equipment, but we have reached out to the municipal government to turn the situation around; That is why we make decisions like this, which avoids patches and temporary solutions and directs us towards what should be the third city of Catalonia,” the mayor remarked.
