EU-Podem in the City Council of Alicante has formalized this Monday in the courts a complaint for an alleged fragmentation of contracts in the municipal legal services. The document is directed against the mayor, Luis Barcala (PP), the deputy mayor and head of Legal Advice and Contracting, Manuel Villar; the councilor of Finance, Nayma Beldjilali, and the former councilor of the area, Toni Gallego, who submitted his resignation in 2025.
In a public note, the coalition explains that with this initiative it aims "to investigate the contracting, recognition, and payment of external legal defense and legal representation services of the City Council of Alicante between 2022 and 2025".
The complaint also extends to those officials "who may appear as responsible in the course of the investigation" and demands "that the possible commission of a continued crime of administrative prevarication be assessed, without prejudice to the legal qualification that ultimately corresponds".
EU-Podem recalls that it already submitted a first complaint to the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Alicante on June 1, 2026, which was archived on July 23. The municipal group highlights that, "although the Prosecutor's Office appreciated" a "patent regulatory breach" and "qualified the conduct" as "difficult to justify", it understood that "the analyzed facts did not reach sufficient criminal entity according to the principle of minimal intervention".
The party specifies that the document now sent to the court substantially expands "that first complaint and incorporates the annual internal control reports of 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, which reflect the repetition of objections for possible fragmentation of minor contracts, the omission of the legal procedure to resolve discrepancies with the Intervention and, in different fiscal years, the need to resort to judicial resolutions to recognize compensation to the providers".
Amounts and objections from the Intervention
According to EU-Podem, "the amounts identified in the reports amount to 18,353.86 euros in 2023, 10,692.27 euros in 2024, and 5,732.03 euros in 2025", which represents "a total of 34,778.16 euros". It specifies that the fiscal year 2022 "is not included in the sum because the managing center withdrew six non-conforming files and the attached documentation does not allow for a fixed amount paid" and that "possible interests, costs, or other costs derived from the claims are also not quantified".
The coalition indicates that, in view of the documentation, "the managing center 13, Legal Advisory, processed homogeneous legal defense or prosecution services separately." It adds that "the Intervention raised objections for possible fragmentation contrary to article 99.2 of the Public Sector Contracts Law and pointed out that, when the managing area did not accept the objection, the legally provided discrepancy resolution procedure was not followed."
EU-Podem also emphasizes that the complaint highlights that "the local government board agreed in June 2023 to tender three lots of procedural representation through an open procedure for 145,200 euros for two years." In the coalition's opinion, that agreement "certifies that the municipal officials were aware of the need to group the services and subject them to a procedure with publicity and competition."
The document also requests "to investigate the repeated absence of the corrective action plan provided for in article 38 of Royal Decree 424/2017" and emphasizes that "the internal control reports from 2022 to 2025 indicate that its preparation is not recorded, despite the fact that it is the responsibility of the presidency of the corporation to formalize it within a maximum of three months to correct the detected deficiencies."
EU-Podem insists that "the available municipal documentation reflects the results of auditing, the objections, and the compensatory judicial resolutions, but does not fully reproduce all the files," for which it requests the court to "verify the facts and identify the resolutions that approved or awarded contracts, recognized obligations, authorized payments, or maintained processing despite the objections, as well as the intervention and knowledge of each person."
The municipal group specifies that the complaint is accompanied by 13 documentary blocks, including "the actions of the Prosecutor's Office, the municipal internal control reports from four fiscal years, the specific report of objections from 2025, the decrees of delegation of powers, and various agreements of the local government board related to the tendering of prosecution services."
"WE COME TO ASK FOR AN INVESTIGATION"
In relation to the judicial initiative, the spokesperson for EU-Podem in the Alicante City Council, Manolo Copé, has stated: "We are not here to dictate a sentence at the doors of the court. We are here to ask that an investigation be conducted into why a practice warned as irregular was repeated for four years without being corrected."
Copé recalls that "the Prosecutor's Office archived it, but did not whitewash what happened," and argues that "when the decree itself speaks of a clear regulatory breach," the responsibility of the municipal group "is to provide the complete vision and ask that the judicial body investigate."
The spokesperson emphasizes that "the seriousness is not only in the amount of each invoice. It is in the fact that the warnings are repeated, the controls are omitted, and there are no measures to correct the practice. The contracting rules protect equality, transparency, and public money."
Finally, EU-Podem stresses that "the filing of the complaint does not prejudge the guilt of any person and that it is exclusively up to the judicial body to assess the indications, carry out the necessary checks, and determine, if applicable, the responsibilities."