The facade of the Santa Lucia Hospital in Cartagena, which fire engulfed Building 5 in a matter of minutes at dawn on Wednesday without causing any casualties or injuries, is covered with aluminum panels filled with polyethylene, a highly flammable mixture that CSIC’s Eduardo Torroga Institute of Building Sciences advised against using for building construction in 2008. It is the same material that covered the facade of the Campanar residential building, in Valencia, in which 10 people died in 2008. 2024; The Ambar Tower in Madrid, which burned in 2020; And Grenfell Tower in London, in a tragedy that left a total of 72 people dead in 2017 and was a turning point in the United Kingdom to review the materials covering the buildings.
The hospital center in the port city, opened in 2011, after the opinion of the CSIC, was also indicated by a technical report on the quality of materials from the same institute, as well as a proposal promoted by the Podemos party and approved in the regional assembly in February 2025, despite a vote against the People’s Party, which urged the regional government to inspect Santa Lucia facilities to ensure they are not at risk of fires. But everything stayed there.
Santa Lucia has been the victim of two fires in its short history: Wednesday’s fire joins the one that occurred in August 2015, also with uncontrolled fury, and which in less than half an hour burned down another part of its facade, the part opposite the first block. This fire was caused by a cigarette butt that someone left unextinguished in the hospital’s maintenance room. In today’s event, sources from the fire department point to one of the outdoor stands, and the National Police are already working on the possibility that a cigarette butt could spark the fire again. In both cases, a death was prevented by the quick action of the Cartagena Fire and Rescue Service (SEIS), whose main park is located just a few meters from the hospital.
Sources from the Ministry of Health confirmed to this newspaper, in a statement, despite the February proposal that forced the executive authority to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the facade of the hospital center, that “the building was designed according to the functional and structural standards at the time the architectural project was prepared.” “In the last renewal of the health license in May 2025, the hospital adhered to fire protection measures and evacuation plans,” said the ministry run by Counselor Juan Jose Pedrino.
The panels of the Santa Lucia Hospital, like those in the Valencia or Madrid building that burned in 2024 and 2020 respectively, are produced by the Spanish company Alucoil SA, two of whose directors have been charged as a result of the investigation by an Italian court over the tower fire in 2021. De Moro In Milan. They are accused of offering flammable aluminum panels for sale.
Polyethylene sheets
These panels are called “Larson B”, according to another report by the Eduardo Torroja Institute of Building Sciences, dated June 2015. The study lists at least, excluding the Cartagena Hospital, 14 buildings in Spain covered with this material, including residential areas, shopping centers and a terminal in the port of Barcelona. It is a kind of “composite sandwich” of aluminum sheets covered with parts of low-density polyethylene.
Specifically, for every two 0.5 mm aluminum panels, three millimeters of polyethylene are sandwiched between them. They are now no longer manufactured, but until a few years ago, they were installed on ventilated facades, such as that of Santa Lucia, against expert advice from CSIC, forming a system that leaves a lethal air chamber between the interior wall and the cladding. Through this cavity, which is fed with oxygen, the fire can run at high speed when it arises. The panels of the Santa Lucia Hospital now lie charred on the balcony as firefighters try to clean up and analyze the disaster. It all happened within minutes: highly flammable polyethylene caused the fire to catch fire.
A hospital worker told the newspaper that about a hundred patients were evacuated, and the fire reached some rooms and corridors and smoke and ash entered the building through ventilation ducts. The situation got out of control in just 10 minutes. The official time for the fire to start was 7:15 a.m. At 7:25, ten minutes later, number 112 had already received hundreds of calls warning that the fire had occupied a large part of the hospital’s facade. It was still night in the city, but the glow of the fire could be seen several kilometers away.
Article already questioned
Polyethylene-core composite panels have been at the heart of the international fire safety debate for just under a decade, particularly after the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London in 2017. That building burned for more than 60 hours and 72 people died in it, although it took months for British authorities to be able to clarify the exact number of deaths.
The fire announced today at the Cartagena Hospital has revived doubts about the measures taken by the Murcian public administration to try to prevent fires from breaking out so quickly in buildings, especially considering that in 2015 Santa Lucia itself was the protagonist of a similar fire.
“Political neglect”
Maria Marin, deputy of Podemos, the party that managed to push the proposal last February to the executive branch to guarantee the security of the hospital centre, once again called for “an immediate investigation”, and asked for clarification of the “political and technical responsibilities”, stressing the “urgent replacement of any flammable material” on the facade of the complex. “Today, what they knew very well could burn has burned again. This has a name: political neglect.” He said: “When the government puts its savings before public safety, it accepts that an entire hospital be exposed to a fire like what happened this morning.”
The coastal city’s health complex serves 279,000 users in the municipalities of Cartagena, Fuente Alamo, Mazarrón and La Union. It includes 630 beds inside. One hundred patients from the oncology, internal medicine and neurology services have already been transferred to other hospitals in the Murcia region, the Ministry of Health has confirmed. About 3,000 people work in Santa Lucia.
To date, an inventory of hazardous buildings that classifies and identifies all public or private buildings likely to easily burn in the event of a fire has not been prepared by the autonomous communities, nor in the Region of Murcia. The total number of buildings in the country covered with this type of aluminum and polyethylene sandwiches is unknown.