The Ministry of Participation, Transparency, Cooperation and Democratic Quality recently accepted ownership of the former Outer Health building at Alicante Port from the Port Authority. This symbolic handover initiates a rapid sequence of steps to bring Valencia’s Democratic Memory Institute into operation. The move aligns with Ximo Puig’s decentralization agenda for the Community of Valencia and mirrors broader state plans. The institute is expected to start functioning in the coming year, before the current legislative term concludes.
Thus, Alicante will become the hub for democratic memory efforts, linking historical lessons to present policy. The Generalitat will staff the Institute with a team of fifteen professionals who will operate with a high degree of autonomy. After the ministry received the keys, workshops began on a preliminary property project. That draft is expected to be finalized by the end of this month or by early July at the latest. Once the draft is complete, about eight months of construction will follow, with the aim of finishing by March next year, and opening Consel’s new headquarters in Alicante as part of ongoing modernization of public memory work.
Goals
The Institute is established under Law No. 14/2017 on democratic memory and social coexistence in the Valencian Community. Its mission is to examine, research and promote the measures enshrined in the law. On the financial side, planning documents anticipate the costs of creating and launching the Institute, including the economic report attached to the preliminary draft law on democratic memory and the annual budget for the Institute of Coexistence and Memory of the Community of Valencia. The Gogora model of coexistence and human rights from the Basque Country provides a reference for governance best practices in memory work.
Consell buys the harbor’s former sanitation building to start the Democratic Memory Institute
The financial plan outlines costs for several essential activities. Location preparation, exhumation and identification of missing victims are identified as major components. The scheduled budgets include roughly 900,000 euros for relocation, 4,600,000 euros for exhumation, and 2,819,600 euros for identification. Reburial work is projected at 1,600,000 euros, while minor items cover document acquisition and copying (around 100,000 euros) and disclosure (about 50,000 euros). Additional funding channels involve cooperation with local organizations, memorial artists and universities, totaling 480,000 euros in subsidies or partnerships.
In terms of its mandate, the new Institute will oversee identification, compensation and recognition of victims, as well as the dissemination of knowledge about democratic memory. It will coordinate with other public bodies and civil society organizations on historical and democratic memory initiatives, and it will facilitate joint actions across ministries to advance these goals.
Organization chart
The Institute’s staffing plan envisions a team of fifteen professionals: one general manager, one assistant general manager, two service chiefs, three department managers, four technicians and four assistant managers. The total personnel cost is expected to amount to 662,695 euros, with an additional 71,504 euros allocated for the general manager’s position. This staffing plan accounts for about 31 percent of the public budget for the first year at full operation of Consel’s Alicante headquarters, estimated at 2,240,833 euros in total.
Regarding space, the office will occupy an area of 630 square meters on public land in Alicante, situated at the roundabout on Avenida Perfecto Palacio de la Fuente. An investment of 900,000 euros will be dedicated to preparing the site for its new role in memory work.