The Canary Islands Court of Auditors has identified serious deficiencies in the administrative planning of San Bartolomé de Tirajana in its report monitoring the 2023 contracting schedule. The city council formally acknowledged in its submissions of January 12, 2026, that it failed to comply with the legal obligation to schedule its contracting activities during the year under review. This lack of planning places the municipality within a widespread pattern across the archipelago, where barely 1% of local entities fulfilled their duty to publish their contracting plans in a timely manner.
The municipal government team maintains that it implemented corrective measures that have allowed it to regularize the situation during the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years. The oversight body confirms that the 2025 program is already duly registered on the Public Sector Procurement Platform. However, the report notes that the data corresponding to 2024 was only submitted through the municipal transparency portal, omitting the main legal channel required by state regulations.
The oversight body, under the signature of its president Pedro Pacheco González, has issued specific recommendations for municipal finance departments to require contract planning simultaneously with the preparation of the 2026 budgets. It calls for the creation of a strict monitoring system to ensure that companies and entities dependent on the city council do not operate outside the bounds of mandatory transparency. The report emphasizes that the lack of execution reports makes it impossible to assess whether the final expenditure aligns with the initial projections.
The lack of transparency in contracting adds to the difficulties detected in auditing expired contracts and the use of extrajudicial recognition of debt. The Court of Auditors is urging the internal control bodies of San Bartolomé de Tirajana to issue clear instructions regarding the content and approval dates of their spending plans. The aim of these guidelines is to eradicate an administrative culture based on improvisation which, according to 2023 data, has undermined the transparency of Gran Canaria's main economic engine.
