Leonor Muñoz, president of the Technical Architecture College of Málaga for 17 years, discusses in an interview the saturation of tourism, the hotel moratorium, and the housing crisis in the capital.
The president of the Technical Architecture College of Málaga, Leonor Muñoz Pastrana, believes that the city will still take time to resolve the issue of access to housing. In an interview with Diario Sur, the head of the entity that groups around 1,700 professionals in the province states that "unfortunately, we are still going to take time to have affordable housing".
Muñoz, who has also been head of the construction licensing department of the Municipal Urban Planning Management for a decade, points out that the problem does not have a single culprit. "It is not a problem of a single factor," she explains: "For a long time, we have not had the production of protected housing, construction costs have skyrocketed, and Málaga attracts many people who need a place to live".
Regarding the saturation of tourism, the dean admits that "we have a lot of people, a lot" and advocates for finding a balance. "We must not reach situations like those in Ibiza or Mallorca," she warns. On the hotel moratorium approved by the Málaga City Council, she values it as "positive in the sense of stopping and reflecting on that model," although she doubts it will be timely: "Many times it is difficult to respond to a problem from the moment it is identified".
When asked about the delays in granting licenses, an endemic issue she acknowledges, Muñoz prefers not to comment on the current management of Urban Planning out of respect for the institution, but laments that "the Spanish administration cannot untangle that bureaucratic tangle". She also rejects the concept of accelerating projects: "It makes no sense; the administration is obliged to provide an efficient service to everyone who knocks on its door".
The college president, who has been elected five times since 2009, also does not understand the new municipal conditions for converting premises into housing. "We do not understand why additional requirements are imposed for ground-floor housing that could have been made from the start of the building," she states, as developers are not obliged to create commercial premises.
Muñoz Pastrana, who balances her role with her position as a technician in Urban Planning, assures that she maintains a "cordial relationship" with the College of Architects and its dean, Susana Gómez de Lara, with whom she claims to have "no conflict whatsoever".
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