What began as a heating failure has exploded into a full-blown scandal exposing years of negligence, mismanagement and administrative chaos at Orihuela City Council.
Children at Playas de Orihuela Primary School have now been left to endure freezing classrooms for more than four months after the council failed — for nearly eight years — to regularise the school’s gas supply.
The root of the crisis dates back to 2017, when the school opened at its current location after operating for 16 years in temporary classrooms. From day one, the building was connected to a construction gas line — an irregular and illegal arrangement that astonishingly went undetected by the council year after year. No inspections, no follow-up, no corrective action.
Only recently did the gas company discover the anomaly. The result was a bombshell: a €200,000 bill for eight years of unpaid gas consumption, presented directly to the City Council.
Overnight, the council found itself facing a massive debt, a cut-off supply, and a school without heating — all because of a problem entirely of its own making.
The consequences have been severe. Classrooms have been without heating for over 120 consecutive days, while the school’s boiler has been broken since March 2024 — another issue left unresolved for months. Despite clear warning signs, the council had no maintenance contract in place, no contingency plan, and no alternative system ready before winter set in.
As temperatures dropped, the council scrambled to approve a temporary diesel supply contract for 16 public schools. Yet Playas de Orihuela — the first centre to raise the alarm — was excluded from the emergency measures. The reason was as absurd as it was revealing: its heating system runs on gas, not diesel, and therefore fell outside the hastily improvised solution.
In effect, the school was abandoned because its infrastructure problems were too complex — and too embarrassing — for the council to resolve quickly.
Families, teachers and staff were left with no choice but to take matters into their own hands. Daily protests began, highlighting 127 days without heating. Parents pooled their own money to buy heaters, an extraordinary step in a public education system that lays bare the depth of the council’s failure.
Meanwhile, bureaucratic paralysis continued. The Parents’ Association has been waiting since early January for authorisation to fund temporary air-conditioning units themselves, still without any reply or response from the Councillor for Education. For many families, the silence has been as infuriating as the cold.
Investigations are now underway. The Department of Education has opened an official incident file, while the Síndic de Greuges (Ombudsman) has launched an inquiry, demanding explanations from the administrations involved. Opposition parties have gone further, denouncing the situation as gross negligence, chronic incompetence and a flagrant abandonment of duty.
This is not a case of unforeseen circumstances or bad luck. The illegal gas connection dates back to 2017. The boiler has been broken since March 2024. Winter did not arrive unexpectedly. Yet at no point did the council act decisively, plan ahead or take responsibility.
A basic public service — heating in a primary school attended by children as young as three — has collapsed through years of inaction by a succession of councillors and municipal officials.
The result is a scandal that raises serious questions about oversight, accountability and governance at Orihuela City Council. While officials negotiate debts and deflect blame, it is schoolchildren who continue to pay the price — as they are left shivering in classrooms that should never have been allowed to fall into such neglect.
FROM THE EDITOR
Council Incompetence Leaves Children to Freeze
It is nothing short of scandalous that children at Playas de Orihuela Primary School have endured over four months of freezing classrooms while the City Council sits on its hands. A €200,000 gas debt, a broken boiler since March 2024, no maintenance contract, and no contingency plan — these are not minor oversights. They are clear signs of systemic failure.
Even as temperatures plummeted, the council hurriedly supplied heating to other schools — yet left Playas de Orihuela out in the cold, the very school that first raised the alarm. Families were forced to buy their own heaters and stage daily protests just to protect their children’s health.
This is more than bureaucratic bungling. It is gross negligence. The Education Councillor, Vicente Pina, has presided over a preventable crisis that puts children at risk. For the sake of the school community, he must be removed from his post immediately. Anything less is a betrayal of every child in Orihuela.
