Opacity reigns in the City Council of Medina del Campo, in Valladolid (20,090 inhabitants), headed by the ‘popular’ mayor Guzmán Gómez in a coalition government with Vox and Medina Primero. Minor contracts, which are given ‘by hand’, are not advertised quarterly as required by law and the Medina Investigative Court has an open investigation into possible obstruction of opposition to participating in Public Affairs.
The minor contracts have not been published for months on the Public Procurement portal – in fact, those signed by the Mayor’s Office throughout the year have been published in December and those of the Government Board have not yet been published – despite the fact that they must be published quarterly and with the following information: its purpose, duration, the award amount and the identity of the successful bidder.
Last week these contracts were not even published, as this newspaper was able to verify, although later the minor contracts from the entire last year were uploaded: yes, only those of more than 5,000 euros, which is the legal minimum to publish it on the portal of Public Procurement. However, on the City Council website Only the minor contracts from 2018 to 2022 appear. Previously, at the request of Gana Medina, the City Council sent him a publication relating to the minor contracts, although essential data such as the amount and the winning company were missing.
This newspaper contacted the mayor of Medina del Campo, who, knowing that the report was going to be about transparency, referred this journalist to the spokesperson for the municipal team and also Councilor for the Treasury, Luis Carlos Salcedo, of the Popular Party. Salcedo justifies this lack of updating due to lack of personnel. “Between the end of the last term or the beginning of this one, one of the two computer scientists retired and another did not join until six months ago; but we have almost 200 workers with computer equipment and they go as far as they go,” he points out in statements to elDiario.es. Salcedo assures that they are “catching up.” Salcedo regrets that they have also been without secretary, vice-secretary, auditor or vice-intervenor for some time and considers that they have been “difficult” positions to fill and that they have achieved them due to the “family roots” of the public workers who now occupy those positions.
Little transparency
The Transparency Portal has several shortcomings, such as those related to the asset declarations of councilors and public salaries: the information related to the remuneration and compensation of municipal officials reaches up to March 2020, when there was even another government team. In fact, the Socialist Group asked in October 2023 to know this information relating to 2022 and 2023. “This information was stopped being communicated to us in the relevant commissions, visibly hindering our work as an opposition,” the political group then lamented, according to the letter. , to which this newspaper has had access.
Furthermore, not even the list of councilors is updated: there are still two councilors who resigned in August 2024. The asset declarations of the mayor and all the councilors – except one – date from 2019, they have not been updated with the new mandate that began in July 2022 according to the metadata of the published files. The exception – and even so, it is from the previous mandate – is the spokesperson for the Socialist Group, since his personal information was updated in 2020. Since then, there has been no update in the asset declarations of the councilors of Medina del Campo, although the opposition assures that they have sent the new declarations to the Consistory, as is mandatory. In fact, for some councilors – of various political stripes – only tax information is available relating to the general tax base of personal income tax for 2018.
Furthermore, when you click on sections such as ‘hiring’ or, the portal sends you to a website that says: “We are sorry for the inconvenience. We were unable to find the page you are looking for.” The agreements only appear until 2022 despite the fact that other agreements have been signed.
Obstruction of councilors
In February 2023, the opposition—PSOE and Gana Medina—registered a document in the Prosecutor’s Office against the Medinense councilor (PP) and the second deputy mayor, Olga Mohíno (Medina Primero), for obstruction of their public work. A case that is still in the Medina Investigative Court. The responsible judge agreed to initiate preliminary proceedings in November 2023 and requested documentation from all parties.
The Medina del Campo City Council has three deputy mayors: one from the PP, another from Medina Primero and a third from Vox. In fact, the ‘popular’ mayor has thirteen delegate councillors, one more than the capital of Valladolid (PP-Vox) has and four more than another city governed by the Popular Party – now in a minority – has, Burgos.
The opposition has requested information regarding the budget for the patron saint’s festivities, the bullfights, urban planning files, protocol invoices and institutional advertising and contracts, among other data. The socialist group and Gana Medina claim that they spent several months without even being able to access the entries in the municipal registry, which makes their opposition work difficult. “It’s like banging your head against the wall,” laments María Jesús Vázquez, from Gana Medina. “Guzmán Gómez has just entered the Mayor’s Office and the officials say they are under pressure,” concludes the spokesperson for the Socialist Group of Medina del Campo, Luis Manuel Pascual.
When asked about this issue, the spokesperson for the municipal team reduced the claims to a “political argument.” “They ask for the same thing several times when they have been answered. In each plenary session they talk about supposed obscurantism when in the committees they do not ask anything. I have been in the opposition and I have used that political argument. None of them are dedicated to it or are particularly hard-working, I don’t know what they are referring to specifically,” protests Salcedo, who asks the opposition for “a little effort.”
Non-collaborating entity
The Transparency Commissioner has also criticized him for his lack of collaboration. The Medina del Campo City Council has not even responded to the self-assessment questionnaire that serves to check whether they have the minimum active advertising, according to what this institution states in its 2023 Annual Report. The City Council assures that they are now going “like a plane.” and they regret the problems that many town councils have in filling their vacancies, not just Medina del Campo. “We are a large Administration in terms of the Law, but the reality is that we are a people’s administration,” Salcedo laments.
The Common Attorney – headed by the same person, Tomás Quintana – included the Medina del Campo City Council in 2023 as a non-collaborating entity precisely for failing to comply with the obligation to report. It has also been included in the list of administrations that do not collaborate for not responding to the resolutions of the Ombudsman of Castilla y León in five resolutions from 2019 to 2020.
He also criticized that, in another process, the City Council did not even respond to a letter from the Attorney General, who intervened under the protection of a citizen who had requested information about the supply of drinking water. In his resolution, to which the Consistory had not responded, the Public Prosecutor insists on the citizen’s right to public participation and the obligation of the Administrations to respond to the requests: “The application submitted has not been obtained for more than a year. answer. As you know, the principles of speed and efficiency must govern the actions of all public Administrations, and are applicable as guiding principles of its activity,” afea.
On another occasion, a citizen questioned the City Council on social networks to find out where the budget for the activities scheduled for the holidays could be consulted. The mayor’s response was, in that same thread, mocking another citizen’s complaints: “Perhaps you think you are smarter than the rest of the population and since you don’t have much to do, you take care of these little things. Let’s see if there are more contributions and fewer demands again.”
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