Salamanca Mayor Carlos García Carbayo today presented two new major urban development initiatives that bring together multiple actions «to continue transforming Salamanca into a more cohesive, inclusive, green, and technological city. A more sustainable, healthier city with higher quality of life and more job opportunities.»
The first one is the Integrated Action Plan for the northeast area of the city, called ‘CoNEcta Salamanca’, which would involve an investment of 20 million euros, 60 percent financed by European FEDER funds. The second one is ‘Green Rails’ and aims to reduce the barrier effect caused by the railway passing through Salamanca, improving the north-south ecological connectivity of the city, with an investment of almost 2.9 million euros, which would also be co-financed by European FEDER funds at 60%. In total, nearly 23 million euros of investment in the city of Salamanca.
«So that the people of Salamanca immediately know what kind of initiatives we are talking about, they are similar to the EDUSI Tormes+ that has transformed the neighborhoods of Chamberí, Tejares, and Buenos Aires and integrated the Tormes River into the city, or the LIFE Vía de la Plata, which greened the city along its entire route,» said García Carbayo during the presentation.
Both initiatives are perfectly aligned with the Local Action Plan of the Urban Agenda of Salamanca, approved by the municipal council in 2022.
CoNEcta Salamanca
The Integrated Action Plan for the northeast area of the city, «CoNEcta Salamanca», is part of a European funding call launched by the Ministry of Finance, whose resolution will be known before the end of the year. As García Carbayo has pointed out, the initiative will focus on the neighborhoods of Garrido Norte and Sur, Chinchibarra, Estación, and Salesas, which together have 33,509 inhabitants.
Why was this area of the city chosen? An essential requirement to qualify for these funds is to implement the plan in a very specific area of Salamanca, with unique characteristics that justify an integrated urban development action from social, economic, environmental, and urban planning perspectives. The scope of action perfectly meets the criteria set out in the call: high population density, with a high presence of older people (half of the population is over 65 years old) and significant social diversity; old buildings with accessibility deficiencies and a urban landscape with little greenery; and a very traditional economic base, with generational replacement issues.
From this situation, the priority challenges to be addressed are: the renaturalization of urban spaces; improving the energy efficiency of different spaces; promoting social integration and equal opportunities; promoting generational turnover in businesses; reducing the digital divide; combating social vulnerability; and improving accessibility.
The Mayor of Salamanca has detailed some specific actions of the plan that are grouped into three main blocks: urban resilience, socio-economic dynamism, and vulnerability combat
– Urban resilience. Four municipal spaces in the target area (the Torrente Ballester Library, the El Charro Municipal Center, the Tierra Charra Senior Center, and the Sánchez Paraíso Multipurpose Center) will undergo energy efficiency and naturalization improvements. These are some of the municipal facilities in Salamanca with the highest user concentration throughout the year. On the other hand, building on the success of the urban gardens made available to the people of Salamanca along the Tormes River as part of the EDUSI, the plan is to create more gardens on degraded and unused plots (to be defined later) near the railway line. It also includes urban renaturalization projects in spaces lacking «greenery.»
– Socio-economic dynamism. If the EDUSI had the Tormes+ training and entrepreneurship center as one of its reference points, «CoNEcta Salamanca» will have ‘La estación 3.0’, a space for social innovation that will be located in the current Casa de la Juventud in Garrido. It will be a center to boost the economy of the neighborhood, promote innovation and business development (including a novel generational turnover program), job insertion, social integration, the development of programs for young people and vulnerable groups… «A container full of activity at the level of a neighborhood like Garrido,» said the mayor.
– Vulnerability combat. Urban digitization actions are included to reduce the digital divide and improve the integration of all groups. These include the installation of wifi connection points in the parks of Garrido, Salesas, Würzburg, Gozos y Sombras; Barcelona Square; and the Municipal Archive, Torrente Library, Casa de la Juventud, Tierra Charra Senior Center, El Charro Center, and the music school.
Within this block, there are also actions planned to facilitate the accessibility of urban spaces and housing, paying special attention to the latter by installing elevators in buildings up to five floors that lack them. This allows for social inclusion, personal autonomy, and community participation for the people who live there, many of whom are elderly.
The environment in which these actions will take place has the necessary urban management tools approved, and would affect the streets located between Cedros Avenue, Cipreses Avenue, Begonias Street, and Trébol Street.
Green Rails
In parallel and complementary to ‘CoNEcta Salamanca’, the City Council will once again apply for grants from the Biodiversity Foundation to implement the ‘Green Rails’ project, which aims to reduce the barrier effect of the railway passing through Salamanca. The initiative includes measures such as:
a) Conversion of the urban section of the old Route of the Silver into a greenway, so that both pedestrians and cyclists can connect to the north towards Zamora or to the south towards Alba de Tormes.
b) Recovery of the dump known as «volcano of Garrido», turning it into a forest park with a viewpoint.
c) Creation of several urban forests in small unused plots located next to the railway line, deepening the urban renaturalization strategy.
d) Creation of urban gardens and planting of fruit trees for food education in schools and degraded plots.
The Mayor of Salamanca is «optimistic» that Salamanca will have the support for these initiatives to begin implementing the actions from the second quarter of 2026. «We have good projects and have demonstrated that we know how to invest and execute European funds. We are one of the few municipalities in Spain that have completed all the projects subsidized in the EDUSI Tormes+, and that makes us compliant and reliable,» said García Carbayo.
The two urban development initiatives presented combine, in the words of the mayor, «nature, technology, accessibility, sustainability, integration, economic development, and employment.» «All of these are ingredients of the same strategy that we are decisively betting on in the City Council of Salamanca to continue building a better city together,» he concluded.