The PSOE spokesman in the Madrid Assembly, Juan Lobato, announced this morning, during the debate on the state of the region, that he would request a commission of inquiry into the splitting of contracts for the construction of vocational training centres by the Community of Madrid. “What happened with the hiring in vocational training centres cannot be tolerated. In this assembly, we will request a commission of inquiry to analyse what happened with the construction of vocational training centres with split contracts, presumably in violation of contractual rules,” he announced.
The Ministry of Education of the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso built at least eight FP and teacher training centers without a contract, out of budget, without official records and without any economic control. At least two of these files were forwarded to the Prosecutor’s Office due to indications that there may be a crime of corruption or prevarication.
The modus operandi ignored Law 9/2017 on Public Procurement, which requires a public tender for works worth more than 40,000 euros. It is a long process full of guarantees in which a contractual specification, a technical specification are drawn up and a procurement table decides which is the most advantageous offer. All this was ignored and the two works of the Ayuso government were carried out under the radar of the system and ordered by hand.
The first known case is that of Ciudad Escolar. A university hospital was built there to allow students from the professional health training course to do internships with a budget of 2.4 million euros. One of its directors told elDiario.es that they simply did what they were asked from above: “We followed the orders of the General Directorate.” The following year, construction began on the Alcalá School of Art with the same payment system to pay 1.2 million euros.
After these cases, elDiario.es revealed illegal reforms in five other centers. One of the star post-pandemic projects of the President of the Community was also built with this illegal and opaque system: the Ignacio Ellacuría Distance Learning Center.
The current Minister of Education, Emilio Viciana, has referred this case of contract splitting to the Prosecutor’s Office, which concerns the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, when Enrique Ossorio (current President of the Assembly) was a councilor. His number two was Rocío Albert, now Minister of Economy and Finance. The PSOE of Madrid has also reported the case revealed by elDiario.es to the Prosecutor’s Office and Más Madrid requested Viciana’s appearance in July, which did not happen because it was blocked by the PP, the majority in the Chamber.
