Getafe refuses to apply the regional protected housing law on industrial land

The Plenary of the Getafe City Council, in an ordinary session on October 14, 2026, agreed to exclude the municipality’s global industrial use lands and the Homogeneous Area U-20, of hotel use and industrial environment, from the special regimes of Law 2/2026. The agreement, signed on October 19, 2026, by the general secretary of the Plenary, Alfonso Magaña Ponte, is published in the BOCM no. 272, of November 12, 2026, section III (Local Administration), pages 116-118, with reference BOCM-20261112-23 (file 03/17.759/26).

The reference regulation is Law 2/2026, of June 11, on urgent measures to increase the supply of publicly protected housing, published in the BOCM on June 15, 2026, and in force since June 16. The text substantially modifies Law 3/2024, of June 28, on urban planning measures for the promotion of protected housing, and in its second, third, and fourth articles, it enables three new pathways:

• Implementing protected rental housing on tertiary office use plots, tertiary lodging plots, and private facility plots.
• Directly increasing buildability, heights, and density on protected housing plots or in vacant public networks destined for that purpose.
• Implementing temporary accommodation modalities on vacant industrial use plots in consolidated urban land integrated into a residential global use area.

The law itself grants city councils a period of four months to decide, by Plenary agreement, not to apply this regime within their municipal boundaries, to establish additional conditions, or to delimit the territorial areas of implementation. Getafe has exercised this faculty following the favorable report of the Permanent Commission of Urbanism and Public Works on October 8, 2026.

Industrial lands and U-20: “manifest incompatibility”

The first agreement excludes the homogeneous areas, action areas, and sectors of the General Urban Development Plan with global industrial use, as well as the Homogeneous Area U-20 of hotel use and industrial environment. The City Council alleges “manifest incompatibility with residential use” due to the lack of necessary minimum public networks and facilities, and clarifies that the municipality’s industrial plots are not in residential global use areas, and therefore are not considered integrated into residential grids for the purposes of temporary accommodations.

Private facilities, noise, and density: three added conditions

The second agreement preserves plots classified as private endowment, so that direct residential alternative use by license is not applied to them, in order to maintain the reserves destined for collective, health, educational, cultural, and sports facilities and services. The third vetoes the change of use in plots directly exposed to noise-generating infrastructures—road, railway—without the intermediate use of a screen, such as a green area or tertiary building.

The fourth point, on the other hand, does not reject the increase in density and buildability, but rather subjects it to municipal control: it will only be authorized when the public interest, the sufficiency and technical viability of the infrastructures, aeronautical easements, and landscape integration are justified.

Prior Detailed Study and remaining scope

This increase cannot be obtained through a direct license: it will require the prior processing and definitive approval of a Detailed Study promoted by the interested party for the affected plot, with a formal evaluation by the Getafe City Council. In the rest of the municipal areas, the residential alternative use regime will apply only to plots specifically classified as tertiary-offices or tertiary-lodging, provided they comply with the detailed planning conditions and the degree of urbanization or the simultaneity regime established by law.

The proposal was joint from the Department of Urbanism and Public Space and the Department of Elderly People and Housing, and incorporated the reports from the head of the Urban Planning and Management Unit dated October 1 and 7, 2026, and from the manager of the Municipal Housing Company dated October 2, 2026.

The agreement determines which land in Getafe remains available for protected housing under the regional regime: it closes the door to industrial land and the U-20 hotel area and reserves private endowment, but maintains the tertiary route in the rest of the municipal district and preserves the possibility of increasing density, albeit with a prior urban planning procedure instead of a direct license.

Source: BOCM, no. 272, of November 12, 2026, section III (Local Administration), pp. 116-118 (official reference: BOCM-20261112-23).