Proposal to End Cronyism and Boost Local Business in Torrevieja

The Torrevieja Socialist Municipal Group is presenting a motion so that, if approved, any interested party can compete for minor contracts to supply works and services to Torrevieja and put an end to cronyism in contracting whilst also boosting the local businesses, and save money, all at the same time.

The motion presented to the plenary session of the council has the objective of giving maximum publicity and information to the processing of minor contracts, so that through free competition any physical or legal person can offer their services and thus reduce the prices paid in said contracts.

Minor contracts are the way in which works with an estimated value of less than 40,000 euro and supply or service contracts with an estimated value of less than 15,000 euro can be contracted.

The main problem that exists in the contracting of the Torrevieja Council, according to the socialist group, is that minor contracts are abused. In fact, the Director of the Legal Department of the Council issued a report in 2023 warning that in Torrevieja minor contracts were carried out routinely, which could lead to “unwanted legal consequences”.

According to the reports, in practice, there are multiple cases bordering on fraud. Companies with the same administrator or from distant places that show no interest in the contract are invited, and very often, people or companies in which people linked at some point to the ruling PP members.

Companies are also contracted to perform functions that should be carried out by the Council’s own staff. In this last case, the appraisal of the Los Romeros property fits in, where €18,000 was paid for an appraisal whose average market price does not exceed €2,000. Right here, the very high prices paid using this type of contract also stand out, too often, close to the legal limits even though the market prices are much lower.

In short, the way the PP manages minor contracts encourages waste and cronyism, sometimes commissioning unnecessary work such as the study of solutions to the C-2 Punta la Víbora Agreement, which was practically copied by the successful bidder of internet articles.

For all these reasons and fundamentally to guarantee transparency, equal opportunities and efficient management, the Socialist Municipal Group proposes that maximum publicity and information be given to the awarding of minor contracts, by putting into operation on the municipal website of the Council a municipal register of companies and self-employed persons of Torrevieja in which all companies and self-employed persons interested in contracting with the Council can register by sector.

In many cases, one or two of the three invited to submit a bid for the contract ends up not submitting, so with this register that we now propose we would be going to physical or legal persons who are already showing interest in contracting with the Council.

Furthermore, when a contract is to be fulfilled by means of a minor contract, apart from communicating through the electronic headquarters of the Council to the registered companies and self-employed persons of the existence of the work, supply or service to be contracted, this must be advertised at the same time on the Torrevieja Council website, so that other companies and self-employed persons, although not registered, can also compete.

This way of managing minor contracts more transparently is common in other city councils and was also a formula used by the government team prior to the PP in the period 2015-2019, so it cannot be argued against this proposal that it may delay contracting. But this would not be a problem as long as there is adequate planning, being precisely what should be expected when the Council’s Ethics Compliance Office is launched, whose creation, incidentally, was awarded to a former senator and former deputy of the PP.