The Department of Justice, Local Administration and Public Service has granted a subsidy totalling 89,049 euros to the Laroya City Council, for the repair of a section of the public tourist trail PR-A366, known as Sendero Los Molinos de Laroya. The project has a completion period of five months and three weeks and is already underway.
This line of subsidies is intended to repair urban roads, highways or rural paths, clean parks and gardens, alleviate damage to municipal buildings, restore basic supply networks, carry out well surveys and renovations in damaged sewage treatment plants or water supply and sanitation networks, as well as other tasks to restore services affected by torrential rains, storms, strong winds and other phenomena.
As pointed out by the territorial delegate for Justice, Local Administration and Public Service, Rebeca Gómez, “a clear example of the positive impact of these subsidies is the project being carried out in the municipality of Laroya”. In this regard, she explained that “the Ministry has allocated funds for the repair of municipal infrastructure, specifically to restore a section of the Los Molinos de Laroya tourist sports trail, which was completely damaged and represented a danger for athletes and pedestrians. This trail is also the only access to the irrigation pond, which increases its importance for residents.”
Rebeca Gómez has indicated that “small municipalities like Laroya do not have the economic capacity to deal with these extraordinary damages on their own and the Junta de Andalucía wants to respond to these needs so that, regardless of their size, all towns have the necessary resources to overcome eventualities and maintain the quality of life of their residents.”
Last year 2023, a total of 59 Andalusian municipalities received aid of up to 100,000 euros to repair damage to public infrastructure caused by these phenomena. Almería was the province with the highest number of towns benefiting, with 17 municipalities receiving such aid, including: Tahal, Beires, Suflí, Berja, Tíjola, Santa Cruz de Marchena, Senés, Sorbas, Lúcar, Paterna del Río, Tabernas, Laroya, Oria, María, Rioja, Cuevas del Almanzora and Vera.
DANA Decree
In addition to the FECLIMA line subsidies, the Government Council approved on December 5 a DANA Decree, which creates a mechanism for extraordinary economic cooperation with local entities in the event of catastrophes, within the framework of the Municipal Cooperation Plan, which allows for dealing with larger damages through the declaration of affected municipalities, with the phenomenon having to be assessed by 112, which deploys the actions planned for declaring an emergency.”
The territorial delegate explained that this decree “regulates the urgent procedure for processing the declaration of an exceptional situation, which will specify the local entities affected, the territorial scope, the types of damages produced that may be subsidised, the range of dates in which they must have occurred and the maximum amount of aid that each municipality may request”.