Salobreña has decided to take out a loan for 352,000 euros to cover debts owed to traders and service providers.
The decision was taken in a Plenary Meeting of the Town Council around the beginning of the month and was supported by all local parties except the far-right party, VOX, and the PP, who abstained.
Mayor Javier Ortega justified the urgency, citing the providers’ need for payment. The Councillor for Economy and Finance, Mari Carmen Rodríguez Callejón, explained that these are “credit transfers from budget lines where there were unspent funds to others that were exhausted,” so most of the amounts have budgetary backing; only €26,969.48 had to be covered without prior allocation.
Meeting these payment obligations has led to a series of objections from the Accountancy Department, which the full council had to overcome in order to process the payments in the coming days.
The spokesperson for Más Costa Tropical, Pedro Ruiz de la Rica, agreed that traders needed to be paid but pointed to a lack of proper procedures in hiring these services and asserting that the lack of a municipal budget for 2025 has caused this situation. “With a budget in place, these things don’t happen,” he stated, adding, that it “shows that things aren’t being managed well.”
Along the same lines, the PP spokesperson, Juan de Dios Márquez Moya, said, “work is being commissioned without funding, and there are no files or documentation either,” and therefore asked the management bodies of the political areas to ensure there are files to support the contracts. He also announced his group’s abstention “so as not to harm the traders & service providers.”
Mayor Javier Ortega closed the debate reminding everyone that they are currently working with an extended 2024 budget.
The Mayor then went on to criticise the opposition for demanding a budget that “solves this problem” whilst “blocking” the possibility of adjusting the garbage-collection fee. According to the Mayor, this rejection will lead the Town Council to a “very complicated” financial situation by 2026.
The lack of an agreement to adjust the tax burden could jeopardize the council’s future funding, as it would be unable to access, for example, new European funds from the Tourism Sustainability Plans. Mayor Ortega warned of possible fines for non-compliance with European regulations, including the possibility of deductions from the State Tax Revenue Sharing.
He did admit, however, that the responsibility for this situation was the fault of “all of us here,” rather than just blaming it on the opposition.
(News: Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)
Keywords: Budget, Short Fall, Loan, Outstanding Debt, Traders, Service Providers
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