The Youth Council Abandons Hope of Returning to Alicante's Centro 14 and Requests a 24-Hour Accessible Space

After years of struggle to return to the Centro 14 facilities, the Alicante Youth Council has conceded defeat. The relocation of various municipal departments to the building—due to the Palas eviction—will, according to the youth organisation, affect the space they had planned to occupy.

"We imagine the affected floor will be CJA's," states its president, Ricardo Villanueva. This is a hypothesis formed after a meeting with the City Council, where they were informed of the new uses for Centro 14 to accommodate the departments previously housed in the Chamber of Commerce building.

This is a decision we "understand," but during the meeting, we "urged the councillor to find a decent space for CJA activities," which they have demanded to be open 24 hours a day to adapt to the needs of their associations.

According to Villanueva, "we have entities that cannot rely on a space that only opens until 8 PM, when their activities can last until 10 PM." In this regard, he emphasises that many CJA members and their associations finish university classes in the late afternoon, and "holding something at 7 PM for the building to close at eight is not ideal."

Therefore, faced with the possibility of turning Centro 14 into "a shared space," they proposed the need for an "alternative" for the youth collective, which "has not yet been provided," complains the CJA president.

Thus, they have called on the City Council for a new space that "fulfils appropriate functions for youth life," with the possibility of being operational during weekends since "there are associations that need to do things on Saturdays and Sundays," and "Centro 14 will not open for CJA or its associations." "Young people are free when the Youth building is closed."