- The Valencian LGTBIAQ+ group formalizes a telematic complaint to investigate the deliberate concealment of the progress of urban planning works.
- The works directly affected 70% of the itinerary and drastically reduced the visibility space for the more than 15,000 people attending.
- Airto Granell denounces the breach of the principles of good administration and transparency by the Valencia City Council in 2026.
The political and legal conflict around the celebration of Pride in the capital of Turia has reached a new legal dimension. The collective Lambda has filed a formal complaint this morning electronically with the Ombudsman of the Valencian Community. The entity formally accuses the Valencia City Council of violating and effectively limiting the right to demonstrate Orgull València, after having systematically hidden the start of large-scale works on Colón Street, an artery that concentrates practically all of the public projection of the march.
An information concealment that prevented searching for alternative routes
The core of the formal complaint focuses on the total absence of transparency demonstrated by municipal services. The citizen mobilization, which according to official data from the Government Delegation brings together between 15,000 and 20,000 people annually, took place in a degraded environment that compromised security. Lambda argues that the lack of prior institutional notice completely deprived the organization of the technical capacity to evaluate alternative itineraries or design contingency plans aimed at mitigating the impact on the march’s political message.
The seriousness of the situation lies in the fact that the Pride itinerary has remained completely unchanged and consolidated peacefully during the last ten years. For the associative fabric, it is inadmissible that the council carried out an urban planning modification of this caliber on the main road without activating the traditional communication channels, breaking a dynamic of sectoral dialogue that had developed with total institutional normality for more than a decade in the city.
The advancement of the works coincided with the safety meeting
The chronology of the events provided in the file of the criminal and administrative complaint reveals clear indications of arbitrariness. The works on the Colón Street roadway began effectively on Monday, June 15. Just three days before, on Friday, June 12, technical representatives of Lambda had participated in a technical security meeting at the headquarters of the Government Delegation together with the delegate of the Valencian Community, the provincial subdelegate and commanders of the National Police and the Local Police.
During that mandatory coordination session, the City Council delegates completely silenced the imminent intervention on public roads. In parallel and that same Friday, June 12, the mayor of València appeared publicly to announce the immediate advancement of the work on Colón Street, a project that according to the official documents of the council itself dated February 20, 2026, was subject to the prior completion of the works on Pérez Galdós and Giorgeta avenues.
Breaking the dialogue for the first time in eleven years
The general coordinator of Lambda, Airto Granell, has described the events as a direct attack on the democratic channels of civil participation. The spokesperson recalled that this controversial lack of coordination coincides exactly with the decision of the Valencia City Council to withdraw, for the first time in eleven years, from the organizational and technical support tasks of Pride. The local corporation has forced the group to unilaterally assume the entire bureaucratic and interlocutory burden.
The letter sent to the Valencian ombudsman requires a rigorous evaluation to determine whether the municipal government’s strategy is compatible with the constitutional precepts of administrative good faith, coordination between institutions, legitimate trust and public transparency. Lambda requests that, once the appropriate investigation procedures have been completed, the Ombudsman issues the corresponding legal recommendations and warnings to the council departments involved to prevent these scenarios of isolation of minorities from being repeated.
Freedom of demonstration goes beyond walking on a sidewalk
The material impact of the works meant direct damage to the dissemination of the community’s demands. The opaque protective fences, industrial containers and heavy machinery significantly reduced the width of the useful road, invaded pedestrian access and completely suppressed the reception areas that Valencian citizens traditionally use en masse to shelter the display of floats and protest banners.
For the management of Lambda, the violation of the right to demonstrate Orgull València is evident, since jurisprudence determines that freedom of assembly is not limited to simple physical transit through a street, but requires safeguarding the right for the social message to be seen, heard and received in a dignified manner by the social fabric. The entity has warned that the Ombudsman’s path does not exhaust the planned legal path, and that once the official conclusions of the institution are known, the group will activate all the necessary judicial and administrative measures to clarify the pertinent political responsibilities.
