Benidorm approves the city's Directional Signage Plan to ensure uniformity and continuity

The plenary session of Benidorm City Council has today approved by the majority the Directional Signage Plan of the city presented by the company Impursa, which awarded the contract for the installation, maintenance and commercial exploitation of urban furniture. This plan, as stated by the Councillor for Mobility, Francis Muñoz, foresees actions “aimed at solving the signage problems that a tourist city like Benidorm presents, to guarantee the uniformity and continuity of the orientation signage, since a large part of the users do not know the road network of the city”.

The document has tried to avoid the loss of continuity in the itineraries planned to access the different points of interest within the city, “with the aim that the urban informative signage does not lose the effectiveness that it should have” indicated Muñoz. The Plan contemplates the installation of 141 new signage posts and 466 new boxes and the estimated investment cost amounts to 274,054.39 euros.

Francis Muñoz has highlighted that the document has been drafted under the supervision of the Engineering Department “and the participation of experts and specialised companies in the sector”. Among other aspects, the road hierarchy of the PMUS and the Global Road Safety Plan have been taken into account and the 56 points of interest established in the Benidorm Universal Accessibility Plan have been considered. The main corridors have also been considered – the avenues and streets used by the majority of citizens and visitors to get around – and the implementation of the Low Emission Zone, planned for early 2025, has also been considered. Finally, in the drafting of this Plan, the existence of the Smart Signage Plan linked to the historical heritage of the city has also been estimated.

Finally, the plan has determined 77 priority points of interest for which directional signage towards other municipalities should be added. In this way, the selected destinations of interest correspond to the following categories: official buildings, funeral centres, educational centres, medical centres, sports centres, transport centres, parks and beaches, zonal destinations, public car parks, dissuasive car parks and nearby roads or municipalities.

Muñoz explained that “once the destinations of interest to be signposted have been identified, the plan carries out a study of the possible optimal routes for each of them” and pointed out that to unify the signage used in road and pedestrian signage “both will have the same format”.

In the session, it was unanimously approved to start the procedure for granting distinctions and decorations by the Generalitat Valenciana, the Cross of Police Merit with a blue badge, in favour of the Local Police inspector Antonio Galdón for standing out with notoriety and perseverance in the fulfilment of the duties of his position, constituting exemplary conduct, having served more than 10 years as a Local Police Officer and having two public congratulations.

The corporation has also approved, with the votes of the PP and PSOE, a proposal from the Popular Party, after hearing the Board of Spokespersons, to demand "urgently from the Congress of Deputies the constitutional reform for the effective recovery of Valencian Foral Civil Law, a hallmark of Valencian identity."

The government spokesperson, Lourdes Caselles, has indicated that what is being demanded is “that we be treated like other historically autonomous communities”. “The Valencian Cortes are the ones that must approve civil law” she has affirmed. The proposal denounces “the delay” of the Congress of Deputies in processing the constitutional reform proposed by Les Corts in February 2020 to solve the cut in self-government concerning Valencian Civil Law provided for in the Statute. This proposal considers “discriminatory treatment” to postpone the civil rights of the five million Valencians. Caselles, in this sense, has stressed that the Valencian Community “was the first to have its civil law”.

The proposal also includes “undertaking actions at the municipal level to disseminate the statutory competence to develop modern Valencian civil law in matters of family law, inheritance, protection of the survival of family businesses and agricultural holdings or people with various disabilities”. Likewise, the Board of Spokespersons of Congress will be required to urgently process the reform “demanded by Valencian municipalism and Valencian civil society effectively and immediately”, pending since February 2020.

On the other hand, the plenary session has given an account of the municipal lawyer's report about the appeals presented against the plenary agreement last March that definitively approved the final version of the Partial Plan Ensanche Levante.

In the chapter on extraordinary dispatches, a proposal by the Councillor for the Water Cycle, José Ramón González de Zárate, for the integration of the City Council into the Community of Discharge Users of La Vila Joiosa-Orxeta has been approved unanimously. The petition requests the CHJ to update the discharge authorisation of said entity once the integration is formalised to regularise both the discharges that enter the reuse pond and the overflows or surpluses emitted into the public hydraulic domain. González de Zárate has stated that “it is a positive measure for Benidorm” and has made a call “to be able to continue investing to use every last drop of reusable water”.