The Town Hall is fighting another sanction, this time from Trabajo y Seguridad Social, which will probably cost us another 224,000 euros in outstanding S.S. payments, plus a further 5,600-euro fine.

Basically, what happened was that T&SS sent an inspector up to the Peña Escrita mountain park and were overjoyed to find that the Town Hall had been pulling a fast one, (a ruse). The workers up there, who look after the animals, (amongst them, ostriches, lions, wolves and a hippopotamus), had been declared peones agrícolas (farm labourers). The reason being that farm workers pay a much lower social security payment than a normal worker, owing to the low wages. However, what amounts to ‘zoo-keepers’ are not farm labourers, and thus the Town Hall should have been paying the full S.S. rate as employers.

As the matter stands, the Town Hall has placed an appeal before the judge, who has frozen the payments until the appeal is processed. T&SS, on the other hand, already considers the Town Hall’s argument contained within the appeal as ‘irrelevant.’

Bear in mind, folks, that it is not only the case of having to pay a sanction, but also paying the legal bill for the lawyers who are handling the appeal. It all comes out of your pocket; not out of the pocket of those found guilty.