The plenary meeting of the Almuñécar Town Council resulted in the Mayor’s party being outvoted by the combined opposition. The CA (Benavides) and the PSOE voted against.
The Mayor, Trinidad Herrera, wanted to be able to negotiate without conditions with the two companies that had forwarded bids for the three tourist installations: bird park, aquarium and mountain park. Under Spanish law a pubic administration has to offer project contracts out to anybody who puts forward a bid: they cannot just decided arbitrarily who will get the contract.
However, if a contract bidding is declared null and void because nobody comes forward or those that do have not complied with the conditions laid down, then the administration can then approach whom they want and come to an agreement. This is what the Mayor wanted to do and put it before the full council meeting, and this is what the CA and PSOE voted against, obliging the Mayor to open up a new bidding from scratch, open to all companies interested and including within the conditions that the the company takes on the original workers from the Aquarium. The contract conditions did include 40 points out of a hundred for any bidder than took on experienced ex staff, but none opted for it.
The Spokeswoman for the CA, Eva Gaitan, considers that now that the summer is over, there is no rush and time can be taken to do it properly.
The Councillor for the Environment, Luis Aragón declared that he was gobsmacked by her comment, pointing out that it was a pity that more time hadn’t been taken by her party, building the aquarium in the first place, instead of rushing to have it opened before the then coming local elections.
He concluded by adding sarcastically “Yeah, sure, we really offered some neat little perks (Chanchullos), which explains why nobody entered a valid bid!”
As for the aquarium Luis Aragón promised, “If nobody comes forward, we will do it ourselves.”
So what is more than likely is that the Town Hall will take on the repair costs and running of the Aquarium themselves – although, God knows where they will find the funding. In the meantime the interim company that is looking after the installations will be kept on to stop them deteriorating further and keep the marine life alive.
The socialist leader (PSOE), Paco Prados, defended his party’s posture in the voting to give the original employees a chance, as neither of the two bidders offered to include them.
We’ll now sum it up for you: the two opposition parties, the CA and PSOE have hamstrung the governing party’s attempt to get the aquarium up and running without it costing taxpayers more money. They claim that they did so in defence of the original aquarium workers but as a third party, the IU, who voted in favour pointed out, when municipal kindergartens under a CA administration were closed down, there was no mention of the workers losing their jobs from these two parties.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)