The Canary Islands Government, led by Coalición Canaria and the Popular Party, has left the rehabilitation of the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote out of the Autonomous Community's 2026 Budget, despite the Minister of Health, Esther Monzón, acknowledging that the building was "obsolete and damaged in its pillars".
At the end of 2024, parliamentarians from the PSOE and Nueva Canarias publicly denounced that the Canary Islands Executive intended to close the facilities of the Insular Hospital. At the time, both opposition parties indicated that this represented "a direct attack" on the rights of the population and "an unacceptable setback" in healthcare.
Both parties acknowledged that the building needed to be renovated, but they opposed the possibility of closing the facilities.
This building, the only one entirely dedicated to geriatric care in the Canary Islands, is 75 years old. A report from 2019 already warned of the damage to its structure.
So, the manager of the Lanzarote Health Services, Pablo Eguía, assured that the building needed "a comprehensive reform" because it suffered "structural damage" and that the closure would only affect the hospitalization units of **Medium Stay and Outpatient Clinics**. According to Eguía, both units would then be temporarily moved to the multipurpose building next to the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital.Meanwhile, the manager indicated that the **Residency** and the **Day Hospital** will maintain their activity in the same center. Despite the damage to the building, the Canary Islands budgets for 2026 do not include a specific allocation for its rehabilitation
For the moment, nearly a year after the controversy surrounding this healthcare center became public, the Lanzarote Insular Hospital remains open to the public, and the Canary Islands Government does not plan to invest part of its budget in its rehabilitation.
From La Voz de Lanzarote, the Ministry of Health has been asked on two occasions if they are considering carrying out the rehabilitation of this space during the next year, but for now they have declined to respond.
Meanwhile, the budgets for 2026 do include the reform of the Insular Hospital of Gran Canaria with more than 4.1 million euros and that of the Doctor Negrín Hospital, also in Gran Canaria, with 1.5 million.In addition, among the items for the next fiscal year, the reform of new outpatient areas of the José Molina Orosa Hospital is contemplated, endowed with 780,000 euros