The Generalitat's Territory commission will definitively approve next Tuesday the urban master plan for the Torreblanca industrial estate, a step that unblocks one of the major industrial projects planned for Lleida. The validation is among the first items on the agenda and will allow, from that moment on, to commission the urban planning projects to develop the sector.
The future Torreblanca industrial park will occupy 400 hectares of industrial land and will also feature an intermodal freight station. The area is located at the exit of Els Mangraners in the direction of Tarragona, next to the N 240 and past the C 13 junction, in an enclave that the planning considers strategic for logistics and industrial activity.
A project stranded since the 2008 crisis
The beginnings of this project date back to 2007, when a large industrial area was planned on land acquired by the Institut Català del Sòl and the Paeria. That initial momentum was halted by the economic crisis and the plan remained paralyzed for years.
The Generalitat resumed the project in January 2021. A year later, in 2022, it awarded the drafting of the urban master plan. The Government's forecast then was to approve the document that same year and start the works in 2023, but the processing was prolonged.
The pending reports delayed the approval
The delay in the definitive approval has been due to the lack of reports from Roads and Railways of the Ministry of Transport, in addition to the processing of the Strategic Environmental Declaration. Once these procedures have been overcome, the document now arrives at the Territory commission for its final validation.
With that definitive approval, the urban planning projects can now be commissioned necessary to make the industrial estate a reality. This is the administrative step that was missing to activate the effective development of this large industrial area in the capital of Segrià.
The intermodal station is projected for 2030
The project incorporates an intermodal freight station linked to the industrial estate. A year ago, the Generalitat published the informative study for this infrastructure, which sets as a horizon that it could be operational in 2030.
The combination between industrial land and logistics hub is one of the central pieces of Torreblanca's proposal, presented as a large-scale action to reinforce the capacity for company establishment and the transport of goods in Lleida.
"Excited after so many years and intense work in the last two" - Fèlix Larrosa, mayor of Lleida
The mayor of Lleida has defended that the industrial estate will mean "advancing in a change of economic model for Lleida" with "the establishment of companies that will drive new opportunities". Larrosa added that it is about "a project to retain and attract talent and boost the university and vocational training".
The approval scheduled for Tuesday does not yet imply the immediate start of the works, but it does open the decisive phase to materialize on the ground an action that Lleida has been dragging for almost two decades and that once again places itself at the center of its industrial and logistical growth strategy.