The conservative Mayor of Gandia, Arturo Torró, doesn’t to appear understand the concept of cutting back on public expenditure.

Arturo, for example, spent a night at the luxury establishment, Hotel Reina Victoria in Madrid, charging the resulting 388 euros to the public coffers. But that figure is only a part of the expenses he knocked up for a one-day trip to Madrid, which totaled 1,144 euros.

The Mayor defended his surprising expenses on his personal Twitter account by saying that he had to travel up to Madrid as a result of the “socialist ruin – I’d prefer not to have to go, but there was no alternative.” There was no alternative to staying at a luxury hotel, it appears.

During his day out, during which he visited three different ministries, he hired a car for 295 euros for the day, leaving it at the station when he returned.

The socialist opposition party were surprised by ‘the necessity’ because the Mayor of Gandia has an official car. Besides that, they point, there is something called ‘public transport.’

“A taxi ride between the Atocha train station to the Ministry only costs 18 euros,” they pointed out.

Talking of trains, the good Mayor also apparently felt obliged to purchase first-class, return tickets on the AVE, high-speed train for two costing a piffling 223 euros – the same trip in tourist class is only 120 euros by comparison.

There’s no point getting into food expense, not because the Mayor obviously didn’t consider packing consider sandwiches, bless him, but rather because there is no record of what he spent in that department.

This is the man who declared that he paid only a “shitty 1,000 euros per month” for his rented flat.

(news: Gandia, Valencia, Spain)