The contract for Granada's public student residence allows two years of construction work that has yet to start counting

Granada welcomes more than 60,000 university students each academic year, a large proportion of them from municipalities in the province that do not allow a daily round trip. For those students, the Provincial Council announced in October 2025 the construction of the first public provincial university residence: a building with between 130 and 140 rooms, with affordable prices, to be built on a plot owned by the institution on Calle Periodista Aquilino Morcillo Herrera. The forecast communicated then placed the opening in the 2027-2028 academic year.

Ten months later, the architectural project has been under contract since February, while the land is still being processed and the construction has yet to go out to tender, despite the fact that the signed contract estimates twenty-four months of construction work.

The sequence is as follows. On February 3, 2026, the Provincial Council awarded the drafting of the project for 290,090 euros. Five and a half months later, on July 20, it launched the necessary procedure for that land to be used for construction. That process remains open and, in fact, on August 12 the institution had to correct it because the web address enabled to consult it was incorrect.

It is worth explaining what that procedure consists of, since it conditions the rest. The 3,837.50 square meters belong to the Provincial Council, although they are classified as public domain assets, a category that keeps them assigned to a specific use or service. In order to use them for something else, a desafectación procedure is required, which turns them into patrimonial assets and leaves them legally available for building.

What was announced in October

The initiative was presented on October 22, 2025 with the provincial president, Francis Rodríguez, and the rector of the University of Granada, Pedro Mercado. According to the Provincial Council's official note, the building would have rooms with private bathrooms, common, green and sports areas, and the public company VISOGSA already had 90,000 euros approved “allocated to the drafting of the project, the initial step to materialize this university residence.”

Rodríguez defined it as “a firm commitment to fostering equal opportunities and to the future of our young people,” with a stated goal: “to keep talent in Granada.” Mercado, in turn, thanked on the University website “this exemplary initiative, which aims to provide opportunities and solve one of the real problems of citizens in general and of many families in our province in particular, namely access to decent accommodation.”

The president also detailed a timetable to the press: contracting of the project starting in January, awarding of the work before the end of summer, eighteen months of execution, and students housed in the 2027-2028 academic year.

From announcement to contract

VISOGSA put out to tender in December the drafting of the detailed study, the basic project, the execution project and the site management of the works. The deadline for submitting bids ended on January 16, 2026 and the opening took place on the 28th. A week later, the award went to the temporary business consortium formed by Quintec Arquitectura y Urbanismo SLP and Ingeniería Ruiz Lara Asociados. The tender price amounted to 297,525 euros excluding VAT; the award price, 290,090.

However, the two figures circulating about this project do not cover the same thing. The 90,000 euros announced in October corresponded to the drafting of the project, while the signed contract also includes the detailed study and the site management of the work. Even taking that difference in scope into account, the gap between what was communicated and what was contracted exceeds two hundred thousand euros.

That same tender document also includes a deadline that likewise does not match what was announced. It sets two phases: four months to draft the projects and, after that, site management linked to the execution of the work, estimated at 24 months plus the authorized extensions.

July: the land procedure

The resolution that launched the desafectación is dated July 20, 2026 and was signed by Marta Nievas Ballesteros, then first vice president and deputy for Tourism and Heritage, by virtue of a delegation of powers from the Presidency granted on November 27, 2025. It opened a one-month public information period, with the file made available to any interested party at the institution's Property Management Service.

Eleven days later, however, Nievas resigned her seat as provincial councillor to join the Regional Government of Andalusia, so the Provincial Council reorganized its vice presidencies on July 31.

That is why the correction published on August 12 bore a different signature. The original notice referred to an address in the transparency portal that had to be replaced by another route in the corporate portal, and the person who corrected the error was José Eric Escobedo Jiménez, acting president during those days.

The work, not yet tendered

The VISOGSA contractor profile does not include the residence work. The section for current work tenders is empty, while among the awarded ones there are protected housing developments in Granada, Pulianas, Cúllar Vega and Almuñécar.

For that reason, the announced date is difficult to sustain. With the 24 months of execution estimated by the contract itself, a work awarded from now on would finish, at the earliest, in autumn 2028, when the 2027-2028 academic year begins in September 2027.

Added to this is the fact that the Provincial Council has not published any revision of the timetable since October 2025, nor is it known whether the project drafting phase, with a contractual deadline of four months since February, has been completed.