Burgers, iPhones, English classes or paid weekends: the PP Government in Zaragoza and the small expenses

The weekend that the number two of the Zaragoza City Council spent in November last year, paid for with public money and justified with an event that he did not attend, is only the latest milestone in a trail of controversies in relation to small expenses since that in 2019 the popular ones reached the Mayor’s Office. Left behind are episodes such as the 136 euros in hamburgers, the payment for English classes for Jorge Azcón in his office or the purchase of an iPhone for a counselor.

Regarding the cost to the treasury, the greatest controversy was aroused in June 2021 by the then Minister of the Treasury María Navarro -current deputy in the Cortes-, when it emerged that the payment for an iPhone for 1,200 euros had been passed on to the City Council, despite that this mobile phone was not included in the list of models offered by the City Council for its municipal representatives.

Also in that case, the councilor chose to minimize the controversy by agreeing to pay for the terminal. “If I had known that this could mean an extra cost, believe me, I would never have asked for it,” Navarro justified.

Meanwhile, and although in terms of quantity it has not been the most relevant, one of the most striking cases was that of a hamburger snack costing 136.70 euros that the mayor, Natalia Chueca, and three other councilors enjoyed on the 8th. June of last year, days after the municipal elections.

The agape took place in a restaurant in the Almozara neighborhood and took place in the context of a Zaragoza gastronomic event, the sixth edition of the BurguerFest. But with the particularity that the four municipal representatives – the councilors of the Zaragoza City Council earn more than €80,000 a year – transferred the €136.70 that the food cost to the public coffers.

“It was a working lunch,” alleged the mayor, who had echoed the event on social networks. Subsequently, the PP reimbursed the expense to the City Council.

The current president, Jorge Azcón, also starred in a tense moment when the newspaper Público announced that he was receiving private English classes in his office at City Hall, the bill for which was later passed to the European Committee of the Regions (CDR), a community entity of consultative nature with headquartered in Brussels and which brings together local and regional representatives of the European Union. It was, according to the aforementioned media, one of the first requests that Azcón made after taking office as a member of the CDR, barely a month after doing so.

Another controversy was the so-called ‘churrogate’, a bill of 3.60 euros for a dozen churros that the government team charged to the treasury to entertain some provincial deputies. Without forgetting the purchase of 7.25 euros in orange ribbons to protest against the Celaá Law that the PP bought with municipal money in November 2020. Both cases were considered specific errors and the amounts were refunded.

It must be remembered that in 2016 the then mayor Pedro Santisteve (Zaragoza en Común) even made national news when it emerged that the municipal coffers had assumed an expense of 16 euros on a bottle of hair gel for the first mayor. “Let Santisteve ask the people of Zaragoza if they see it as logical that they pay the hair gel with taxes,” Azcón then attacked the councilor.