The facade of the Hospital Santa Isabel de Cartagena, which burned this million without causing any injuries, is covered with highly flammable panels: aluminum sheets filled with polyethylene, a substance that acts like “solid gasoline” in contact with fire and is found in other buildings destroyed by exceptional fires in recent years. These include the Siege of Campanar in Valencia, where 10 people were killed in 2025; the Moro Tower in Milan, which was destroyed in 2021; The Ambar Tower in Madrid, which burned in 2020; Or Grenfell Tower in London, whose fire in 2017 killed 72 people and sparked international concern about these materials. The Cartagena Hospital Center itself suffered a fire in 2015, and is also without inheritance.
The panels covering the hospital in Cartagena, the building in Valencia or the ground towers in Madrid and Milan are produced by the same company in Spain, Alucoil. One of his directions was attributed to an Italian court to market these facade coatings, called Larson PE.
Despite the known danger of the substance, there is no census of buildings with combustible facades in Spain. After the Campanar tragedy, changes were announced, but no one in the community had specific public statements. Thanks to CSIC’s analysis, it is known that at least four buildings in Spain use this type of panel, from residential complexes to malls. Among them is the Santa Lucía de Cartagena Hospital.
This center was originally built in 2015, even before Grenfell Tower in London. After the Valencia disaster, the deputy of Podemos in the Murcia region, Maria Marin, took notice of the covering material of the Santa Lucia Hospital and asked for its replacement, recalling how part of the facade of the siege of this health center was consumed by fire in 2015 due to a poorly surveyed hill. On that occasion, from the beginning, the substance on the cover was considered to be responsible for the rapid spread, although there was little left to avoid future problems like the one that arrived this month.
A year after the request of the representative to renew the façade of the hospital and the presence of the Murcian Council of Health, Juan José Pedrino, the formation was able to present a proposal in the Regional Assembly so that the government would act in this regard, but all that was left behind. “It’s not an accident,” Marin said after the overnight incident last week. “Today I must burn what I knew very well could be burned,” he says. “This has a name: political neglect.” “When the government expects aversion to public security, it accepts the possibility that a hospital will be exposed to a fire like this morning.”
Fire highway
Larson PE panels are no longer manufactured, but have been commercialized since 2001 and have been used for years under the coverage of fire regulations in force since 1990. Therefore, when building permits were granted, such as those for Campanar, in Valencia, or the Ambar Tower in Madrid, in 2005 and 2006, they awaited the entry of the European Update on the Fire Resistance of Building Materials, which prohibits the use of these panels on facades.
These coatings have accumulated several unfavorable reports from the CSIC-based Institute of Building Sciences Eduardo Torroja (IETcc). In 2008, the center warned that the panels were not fire-resistant, but their use continued for years.
Each panel is a sandwich of 0.5 millimeters of aluminium, three millimeters of polyethylene and another final layer of 0.5 millimeters of aluminum. A system that creates an air chamber between the interior wall and the cladding is installed on ventilated facades. This building form initially became popular because it improved thermal insulation and comfort in homes.
However, in the event of a fire, this cavity acts as a “fire highway.” When the fire reaches the panels, the coverings quickly melt; The polyethylene, which is highly flammable, begins to drip, and the inner chamber acts like a chimney that ignites the speed and voraciousness of the flame.
Spain follows Europe in regulating home fires, as pointed out in this journal by the New Fire Observatory, an entity founded in June last year that includes 19 private organizations. In 2006 and 2019, the standards in the Technical Building Code were tightened, but stopped short of excluding the use of combustible materials. In fact, polyethylene is used with additives that slow the expansion of the flame, warned observatory head Andres Pedrera.
Until now, little has been known about the inventories of dangerous buildings that promised the many autonomous communities behind Hichos Valencia. El de la Generalitat Valenciana knows just that 25 buildings constructed between 2020 and 2024 were identified “for which a more detailed façade analysis could be recommended”; In the Community of Madrid, according to the official College of Architects, dangerous buildings were registered, but the regional government did not want to announce the exact number; In Catalonia, the study has not yet ended, although the deadline for announcing it has already passed.
It’s a very different approach to the UK, where after the Grenfell fire authorities began a mapping and clearing process. Los Latest published dataWhich is updated month after month, indicating that 5,011 residential buildings have been detected with dangerous cladding. Of them, 2,403 in each city, renovation work has begun or been completed thanks to the public assistance program.
In Spain the judicial process also flourished. The Campanar case sunk into the minds of the Valencian public, who finally filed it away because it was considered an accident. However, Hechos Torre di Moro is still being sentenced in Italy. Two Alucoil employees are accused of being sellers of these panels in Italy, and are accused of participating in a disastrous crime.