Torrevieja carried out 20.3 million in investments in 2025 and with 43 million in surplus it can pay it’s debts

The Torrevieja City Council concluded the 2025 fiscal year with the biggest budget in its recent history, according to the balance sheet made by the government team for the settlement of the 2025 budget. This will shortly be brought to the plenary session.

According to the Finance Department, which is led by Domingo Paredes, the first state spending credits have gone up from 97.6 million euros in 2023 to 168.5 million euros in 2025. This shows that the municipal budget is growing “structurally” and that the City Council’s economic ability is clearly growing.

Execution of the budget

In this case, budget execution has reached 96.54% of initial appropriations, which is the greatest proportion in the last five years. According to the same sources, “represents an increase of almost €35 million in just two fiscal years,” recognised obligations—payments—amount to €161.8 million, compared to €146.8 million in 2024 and €127.9 million in 2023.

The total number of payments made in 2025 was 159.7 million euros. The municipal budget area believes that this shows a high level of genuine materialisation of the budget and strengthens the effective fulfilment of municipal duties.

The City Council spent 9 million euros more than it got in taxes, fees, and transfers, without including investments.

Investments that are real

The City Council made a total of €20.3 million in capital investments in 2025, “consolidating the investment growth trend of recent years,” which means that just 26.39% of the investments were made. But this number is much larger than the amounts recorded in 2021 and 2022, when investments were only €3.8 million and €2.1 million, respectively.

The discrepancy between planned credit and actual work occurs because big projects take a long time to finish. Only part of the budgeted amount is spent, not the whole thing. This is because of the “administrative deadlines inherent in public procurement, maintaining a sustained and structural investment path.”

The Finance Department said that these measures show “the real ability to fund investments and carry out strategic projects without putting the budget balance at risk.”

The municipality’s outstanding debt, which is money it has borrowed from banks, is 24.97% of its current revenue. This is mostly the loan taken out in 2024 to pay for investments of €32.6 million. According to local government rules, this proportion is significantly below the legal limit of 110%. It is also much below the 75% level that would allow these kinds of transactions to happen without extra permission. The loan is only used to make investments that will pay off in the future, not to pay for things that are happening right now.

When the loan is paid off with the extra money from the treasury, that debt will probably be zero for a few weeks. The City Council will then start using the loan again for 2025, which is something that has happened a lot in the past several years because the city can only make investments by taking on debt.

Money owed

The governing team says that the City Council’s national accounting shows “a negative result stemming from the calculation criteria imposed by state regulations.” This is because state rules don’t allow “fully available” resources, like incorporated surpluses or the loan set aside for investments, to be counted as income. This means that there is a deficit of 9 million euros after adjustments. The City Council got 129 million euros in 2025 and spent 142 million euros, not considering loans or surpluses. This will make the municipality have to put on hold the nine million euros it had planned to spend this year.

In this regard, the government team points out that it maintains a surplus, “retains a reserve of more than 43 million euros”, complies with the spending rule, and invests with its own resources, and emphasises that “it is not reasonable to speak of a deficit when the financial reality of the municipality is one of stability and capacity for growth.”

The Torrevieja City Council’s main sources of income in 2025

Fees and rates for waste

The Torrevieja City Council hasn’t changed municipal fees to keep up with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since 2020. This choice has kept the prices of services like water, sewage, licences, driveway permits, the street market, sports schools, and public transportation from going up along with the overall rise in prices. This is because inflation has been around 23% for a while now. If fees were automatically updated based on the CPI, the city would have made almost €2.2 million more in income in 2025 alone. The Finance Department said, “This money has not been collected and has remained in the pockets of Torrevieja residents, representing economic relief for households and businesses in a complex inflationary environment.”

Domingo Paredes, the Finance Councillor, says that the 2025 financial statement shows a City Council “with high budget execution, sustained investment, a surplus, a consolidated reserve, contained debt, and payments to suppliers in record time.” Torrevieja’s financial situation is strong because of these indications, and it can keep working on key initiatives without putting its public finances at risk.

The numbers in the revenue portion of the financial statement show how much money is available to support the municipal accounts. This cushion, as it has been for decades, comes from the city with the most second homes in Spain collecting Property Tax (IBI), the Capital Gains Tax (CIV), which taxes buying and selling property, and state transfers given to Torrevieja for its contribution to state taxes and its importance as a population center. The same data also shows that some fees in this revenue sector are still important, even though they have been frozen for a few years.

The City Council got €34.2 million in property tax (IBI), which is €400,000 more than they thought they would get. However, the tax on the rise in the value of urban land (Plusvalía) did not bring in as much money as expected. It only brought in €13.7 million instead of the expected €17 million. The City Council already has enough money from IBI and Plusvalía to meet the costs of its more than 800 employees, which add up to around €40 million a year, and some of its running costs, which add up to another €72 million. These costs of doing business include things like picking up trash, taking care of parks and gardens, and public transit.

The governmental gift to Torrevieja, called the Complementary Financing Fund, is also meant to meet current expenses. It is now 24 million euros, up from an early estimate of 21 million. Some taxes, like the special use tax on companies that provide utility services, didn’t bring in as much money as expected. They only brought in 1.9 million of the 6.8 million expected. However, other taxes brought in more money because the economy was doing better, not because the tax rate went up.

This was true for revenue from car taxes, which was more than 5 million euros, which was 500,000 euros higher than planned. It was also true for revenue from building permits and street market stalls, albeit to a smaller extent. The fee for rubbish collection went up to 13 million euros, which is about six million euros more than last year. This is because the rate went up, but it is one million euros less than expected because the service costs almost 30 million euros a year, including the money that goes to the Waste Management Consortium. Still, the difference between income and expenses was more than 9 million euros.