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A court overturns the tender for the new bus service in Torrevieja of 138 million euros
The resolution points out that the specifications of the PP government team violate the principle of free competition by requiring the successful bidder to buy 32 buses from the City Council for 19 million euros as soon as the contract begins.
Torrevieja will have to wait even longer to launch its new urban transport service. The Central Administrative Court of Contractual Appeals (TARC) has upheld an appeal filed by a company in the sector against the tender specifications for the new urban bus service, which has an estimated value of €138.5 million. This is the second largest public contract in Torrevieja's history, surpassed only by the garbage collection contract.
Three clauses
The resolution of this special administrative court upholds the challenge of three fundamental clauses of the specifications appealed by the company Ruiz Bus: the one that provides for the investment to be made by the concessionaire that is awarded the tender, as well as its amount; that of the technical solvency required of companies, and that which contemplates as an award criterion the provision of certain ISO certifications. De facto it means the annulment of the specifications "with retroaction of actions to the time prior to the drafting of them", says the resolution that is already publicly accessible. It must be reworked and rewritten, and tendered again.
The court's decision comes when the tender had already advanced with the submission of bids from three companies: two unknown in the area, Alcalabus and Marfina Bus, in addition to Avanza, which is currently carrying it out. However, the large companies in the sector operating in the Valencian Community desisted from applying for this important contract. The appeal, which paralyzed the evaluation of the proposals by the contracting committee, was filed in June and the TARC has taken five months to pronounce.
Discriminatory
The appellant, despite not appearing in the tender, challenged the requirement of the payment of "an exorbitant amount" immediately to the award that could constitute "a barrier to entry", a proposal that he considers designed to avoid the competition of small and medium-sized companies and "benefit large companies". The specifications require that the company that wins the tender immediately buys 32 buses from the City Council within a month for 19 million euros, a supply that has already been previously awarded by the municipality since 2022, although without formalizing, with the company Solaris Bus.
The court points out that "the requirement of a single payment for the entire investment at the beginning of the concession is not justified, and whose amount is, in addition, higher than the corresponding amount", since a part of it appears in the specifications as subsidized by European funds to the City Council. Nor is it justified because the buses will not be available to the concessionaire immediately: the specifications give 18 months to have them.
And it concludes: "This court understands that it is a discriminatory condition in access to the tender for the concession, the requirement in a very short period of time (1 month from the formalization) of the amount corresponding to the entire fleet, not being proportional or justified, especially if the previous file of the supply of the buses necessary for the provision of the service is considered".
Urban bus transport, vital for tens of thousands of workers and tourists, is a municipal benefit, which although still free for those registered, focuses a good part of the complaints of citizens when it comes to assessing the public services they receive from the Torrevieja City Council.
Overqualification
In a second challenge, the overqualification of the personnel required by the specifications was questioned. The court points out that the lack of justification in the file of the required qualifications is accredited. "Although the suitability of the same is not disputed, it is considered by this court that there is no motivation or regulatory protection for the requirement of university degrees, and even less the assignment, exclusively, of university degrees or certain professionals, insofar as it restricts competition, nor is it explained or justified why the quality and adequate execution of the contract is inexorably linked to a certain higher degree".
Accreditations
Finally, the court points out that "the appellant company is right" "as there is no evidence in the file, specifically in the justifying report, of justification of the impact of the certificates", which the specifications require and "in what way it directly affects an improvement in the quality of the provision of the service".
Without making it public
The resolution is signed on October 15, butthe City Council's government team headed by the mayor and regional deputy, Eduardo Dolón, has not made it public, not even to take it into account in the initial approval of the 2026 municipal budget, which took place last Wednesday. The TARC's decision can be appealed through the contentious-administrative route, especially in the aspect of the legitimacy of a company that has not applied for the tender to appeal the specifications. A lawsuit that the City Council has already won for the case of the contract for the conservation of parks and gardens. But waiting for the ordinary courts to resolve would delay the hiring much longer. The most likely, according to sources from the government team, is that a formula will be sought to modify the specifications in the sense indicated in the resolution.
The government team has been trying to carry out this initiative for six years. Urban transport in the municipality provides an outdated service with a series of shortcomings that make thousands of users desperate every day who need it to move around a city with dozens of residential areas far from the urban center and public facilities. City buses are used by three and a half million passengers a year in a municipality with more than 110,000 registered inhabitants that multiplies its population during holiday periods.
There is also interest in resolving the legal situation of the current benefit, irregular from an administrative point of view: it has not had a contract since 2012 and Avanza has been paid since then, month by month, with repair reports from the Municipal Intervention. At the moment the usual bill is 260,000 euros per month.
One of the unknowns left by the resolution is what the municipality is going to do with that contract awarded in 2022 for the supply of 26 hybrid buses and 6 electric buses from Solaris Bus, the only company that applied after the first tender was deserted, and which is not formalized, if it is taken into account that this aspect is fully affected by the resolution that annuls the specifications.
The main objective of the new service is to achieve urban transport in line with the city's population, both by law and seasonally, with the aim of considerably improving the frequencies of buses, increasing existing lines and renewing the current fleet with more comfortable, safe and environmentally sustainable vehicles.
The forecasts
The Mayor Eduardo Dolón and the councilor responsible for the Transport area, Antonio Vidal, offered a joint press conference at the end of the of 2023 to ensure that by the end of 2024 the new service would be up and running.
Shortly after that appearance, the municipality asked the companies in the sector to draw up a cost structure to approve the specifications. Only Avanza responded. And he had to repeat the process. He then transferred the specifications to the National Evaluation Office (ONE), which validated them. In fact, the municipal technicians, in their allegations to the TARC, argue that the ONE He did not object to the clauses that are now invalidated.
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