Whatever they put into it, Grenadians, especially those of a certain age, will continue to refer to this building as that of the Bank of Spain. Because between 1933 and 2004, the headquarters of the financial institution in Granada was located there, right in the middle of Gran Vía, and that … It’s been a long time, so the Bank of Spain thing is internalized.
At its meeting on November 26, the Governing Council of the Junta de Andalucía made official what had already appeared: the building passes into the hands of the Granada Provincial Councilwho acquired it for 9.2 million euros. In a short time it will cease to be the headquarters of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office and the General Prosecutor’s Office of Andalusia, functions that it has fulfilled since 2014.
Concretely, the Council of Government authorized the “direct transfer” of the building and approved a temporary and partial reservation of use for a period of twelve months, extendable by an additional six months, by the Public Prosecutor’s Office so that the transfer of judicial functions.
The property will be transferred to the Provincial Delegation while the Authority will maintain the occupation of part of its facilities due to the activity of the Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Andalusia, which will move to the Royal Chancelleryin the neighboring Plaza Nueva, next to the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA), and the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Granada, which will be located in the property on Fernando de los Ríos Avenue known as El Cubo, in the future City of Justice.
The building known as El Cubo will house the future City of Justice of Granada
The Council “frames this operation within the framework of the Judicial Infrastructure Plan 2023-2030 drawn up by the Ministry of Justice, with which additional income of more than 9 million euros is obtained which will be allocated to the new judicial seat planned in Granada as part of this Plan. In fact, the sale of real estate is one of the alternative financing methods provided for in the document, which aims to act in 100% of Andalusian judicial districts and mobilize more than 1,500 million euros.
The sale of the property was agreed last June by both institutions. The intention of the Provincial Deputation is to give cultural use to a building which should have had it in recent years, but which was never realized. We must look back, but not too far, to remember that in 2008 the Junta, then governed by the PSOE, promoted a series of actions to commemorate, in 2013, the millennium of the founding of the Kingdom of Granada.
THE fundamental actions What they proposed was to create a large park in La Vega; build a large stage space – or Opera Palace, as they also called it –; rehabilitate the Enríquez Palace, in Baza; renovate the Dar-al-Horra palace, where Boabdil’s mother lived; and transform the Bank of Spain into the headquarters of the public prosecutor’s office.
Broken promises and conflicts
Without going into too much detail: the park has not been built, the work on the Enríquez Palace is still in the preliminary phase, the Opera Palace is a land where weeds grow and the former house of the mother of Boabdil Yes, it’s more organized.
Concerning the seat of the public prosecutor’s offices, the agreement was respected, but not completely. There was a conflict with the city council of Granada, which planned to establish a museum there with essentially local content, and the Council won the game, but the building, which remained empty for a decade, became a judicial seat in 2014 but was never filled with content; There have been unoccupied spaces and the promised cultural use has been conspicuous by its absence over all these years.
The Provincial Council wants to reverse this situation. With the purchase of the building, in addition to strengthen its presence in the capital –he has already acquired the Palacio de las Niñas Nobles, which today is the institutional headquarters and also houses the Tourist Office– he deepens his idea of bringing historic buildings back to life, as he did with the castle of La Calahorra, or Casa Dengra, in Baza.
The former Bank of Spain will be, when the entire transfer process is completed, “a meeting space between the administration, citizens and the cultural fabric, contributing decisively to the achievement of this ambitious objective”. This was announced in June François Rodriguezpresident of the Provincial Council, who also announced that one of the objectives is to build a museum there “dedicated to the illustrious Grenadans”. This is the bet that the municipality made in its time, but, as they say now, after having tried it.
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