The procedure for awarding the new water contract in Almonte has been declared “null and void” by the external legal advisor hired by the City Council itself. The opinion, dated April 8 and signed by Francisco Javier Jiménez de Cisneros, Professor of Administrative Law and lawyer, concludes that the process carried out by the contracting board on March 26, including the technical evaluation and the award proposal, is flawed.
The report, registered with the Consistory, analyzes the incidents that arose during the board session and confirms the irregularities previously reported by this newspaper. The main one is the intervention of a second external technical advisor without complying with the requirements established in the Public Sector Contracts Law.
The opinion concludes that the board violated the Contracts Law by introducing a second consultant without the authorization of the Plenary or public disclosure of the technicians.
The legal advisor emphasizes that, had a new technical evaluation been decided upon, the same procedure as with the first company should have been followed: express authorization from the contracting body, reflection in the file, and publication of the identity, training, and experience of the technicians, as required by article 326.5 of the LCSP.
The report rejects that the board could rely on the generic power to request “as many reports as it deems appropriate,” clarifying that this provision does not eliminate the specific guarantee regime imposed by law when independent experts are used to evaluate decisive criteria. The omission of these requirements prevented bidders from knowing who was evaluating their offers and deprived them of exercising rights such as the recusal of technicians, violating the principles of transparency, equality, and free competition.
Given the contract amount, exceeding 207 million euros, the competent contracting body is the Plenary of the Almonte City Council, not the Mayor's Office or the board itself. Any authorization to introduce a second consultant should, therefore, have been approved by a plenary agreement. After reviewing municipal agreements since November 2025, the advisor concludes that “there is no trace of such authorization,” which determines “the nullity of the evaluation carried out by the second consulting firm and all subsequent actions” of the board in the session of March 26.
