Last May 2023 the City Council of Santa Fe, Granada, unanimously approved by all political groups to make available the municipally owned sugar mill of Nuestra Señora de la Salud, as a space for the location of a possible factory of poplar and pine structural wood laminates arising from the LIFE Wood for Future project. The motion was presented jointly by the political groups PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos and IU, with the aim of recovering the cultivation of poplar in the town and the Vega de Granada.

In the following link you can read in full the motion, officially transferred to the University of Granada and the Coordinator of the LIFE Wood for Future Project:

https://life-woodforfuture.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CERTIFICADO_.pdf

After the municipal elections of May 28, on July 11, 2023, the new Mayor of the town, Juan Cobo, convened a meeting with members of the LIFE Wood for Future project (Belén Feijóo from USC-PEMADE and Antolino Gallego from UIMA-UGR), the President of Agrupación Marjal and the spinoff Iberolam Timber&Technology (Victoria Carreras) and the Director of Transfer and Innovation of the University of Granada, Carlos Sampedro, together with members of his government team and urban planning technicians of the city council.

During the meeting, the architect Belén Feijoo presented a first proposal for a factory located in the Azucarera de la Salud, on which the City Council, the University of Granada, the private initiative and the LIFE Wood for Future project are studying the feasibility of the project, incorporating the Andalusian Government and the Provincial Council of Granada to this process shortly.

The Señor de la Salud de Santa Fe sugar factory was built in 1890, at the height of the sugar beet growing boom in the fertile lowlands of Granada, by the commercial company Señor de la Salud under the orders of the architect Francisco Jiménez Arévalo. Located on the road from Santa Fe to the neighboring town of Atarfe, the complex of La Cantina consists of two parts, on the one hand, the sugar factory itself, with two parallel and united brick buildings of 83.5 meters long and 12.5 meters wide each, and on the other hand, the alcohol factory consisting of a building of 66 meters long by 12 meters wide, in three bodies. It has notable historical, industrial, architectural and landscape values and is a significant example of 19th century industrial architecture in the province of Granada.

The building, acquired by the City Council of Santa Fe in 2000, has had several uses over time, initially as a sugar mill and distillery, later as a timber warehouse and finally as an Army powder magazine until 1998.