Andalusian culture department expands workforce following architects' criticism

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The professional association of architects recently criticised the regional government for long reform and construction processing delays

Matías Stuber

Tuesday, 31 March 2026, 12:14

The Andalusian regional government (Junta) approved on Monday an amendment allowing for the hiring of five new civil servants in Malaga province to improve the management of historical heritage.

With this initiative, the Junta responds to criticism from the professional association of architects regarding renovation and construction planning delays of up to two years.

To tackle the issue, the department of culture of the Junta is going to strengthen its admin capacity by recruiting 26 new civil servants in provincial offices. Malaga, with five new posts, is seeing the biggest increase in human resources.

The regional ministry of culture has modified the job classification list (RPT) "in order to provide the necessary resources to the administrative workforce in the area of historical heritage, addressing the needs of each of the territorial delegations".

On 20 March, the professional association of architects denounced the culture department's delays in issuing necessary rulings for processing building permits for properties with heritage protection. "These delays are unacceptable and fall far short of the streamlining objectives established in the regional government's own simplification decrees," they stated.

The association regrets that the regional government "has not implemented measures to improve the processing times of planning applications and has also ignored the requests for meetings made by this institution to address this problem, which has been causing serious damage to the professional activity of architects for far too long, as they can only express their despair at not being able to work properly".

According to the architects, this is due to "undersized staffing to handle the number of existing cases, coupled with high turnover of technical staff and the absence of a unified and shared set of criteria among all architects", which leads to "an incomprehensible disparity in interpretations of the applicable legislation".

Of all the new roles the Junta has approved, 16 contribute to the expansion of the workforce, while the rest are the result of the adaptation of existing positions, with the aim of making their allocation more flexible and "better meeting operational needs".