President Esperanza Aguirre of the Community of Madrid, accompanied by Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, head of the regional Health Department, inaugurated Hospital de Torrejón de Ardoz yesterday.

The ceremony was attended by representatives from regional and local politics, FCC CEO Baldomero Falcones and FCC Construcción's general manager, Avelino Acero.

The new hospital, in the Henares River Corridor, was built by a joint venture in which FCC is a partner. The hospital will care for a population of 136,000, all inhabitants of the city of Torrejón de Ardoz and adjacent cities and towns in the corridor, such as Daganzo and Ajalvir.

The hospital will shoulder 95 percent of the healthcare needs of the patients in its area and will be equipped with a wide range of medical and surgical specializations and latest-generation diagnostic tools in order to do so.
From now on Torrejón's hospitalization facilities include 250 beds, 10 operating rooms, 12 dialysis stations and six delivery rooms. All these additions will help provide better service for this area of the Community of Madrid.

A comprehensive project: Construction, equipment and operation

The work on this new health centre, in which FCC Industrial was placed in charge of electrical, mechanical and communication systems, was completed within the scheduled 18 months. The budget was 139 million euro and covered construction, equipment and operation under a 30-year concession.

FCC has experience in public/private partnership projects of this type. In 2007 it built the 110-bed Hospital del Sureste in Arganda del Rey for the Community of Madrid, also under a concession, and FCC is currently busy constructing Enniskillen Hospital, in Northern Ireland, a 300-bed facility, under the first concession agreement of this sort to be awarded to a Spanish firm in the United Kingdom.