The President of the Government of Aragón, Jorge Azcón, announced during the State of the Community debate the construction of a new Royo Villanova University Hospital. This project constitutes the first public hospital to be built in the city of Zaragoza since the creation of the Autonomous Community.
The new hospital will provide services to the left bank of Zaragoza, a population of around 200,000 residents, and will replace the current Royo Villanova University Hospital. The existing facility, located on San Gregorio Avenue, has space limitations that are incompatible with the regulations and healthcare needs of the 21st century. Additionally, the population on the left bank of the Ebro has quintupled since the hospital became part of SALUD in 2002.
The Government of Jorge Azcón considers that constructing a new building is the most optimal solution for three reasons: to guarantee a higher quality of service by avoiding construction disruptions, to shorten construction timelines, and to create a 21st-century hospital without adapting to existing infrastructures.
The 2026 budget will include sufficient funding to initiate the drafting of the new Royo Villanova project. Although it is not possible to specify the final cost before the project is completed, the investment estimate is over 200 million euros.
The future hospital will be designed based on principles of evidence-based hospital architecture, conceived as a «living entity» to adapt to future demographic and technological changes. The increased space will allow for significant improvements in care, teaching, research, and the optimization of patient services and flow.
The current hospital has 254 beds and 7 operating rooms (6 scheduled and 1 emergency). Its annual activity exceeds 52,000 emergency cases, 1,600 admissions, with almost 70,000 hospital stays and over 8,000 operations.
The new center will maintain its accreditation for specialized training in Internal Medicine, Pneumology, Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Traumatology, Urology, and Mental Health Nursing. It will also continue to be a reference hospital for the multiprofessional teaching unit of Family and Community Care in sector I.
