Manilva Town Hall’s spending on fiestas and events is once again at the centre of controversy following the figures presented by VOX representative Antonio Marín, who has publicly denounced an increase of 554.26% over the amount originally budgeted for this item during 2025.
According to the figures released, the Town Hall had earmarked €70,000 for fiestas over the course of the year, but actual spending reached €388,000, a deviation that points to a lack of budgetary planning and the recurring use of extraordinary mechanisms to fund expenditure that, by its nature, should have been properly planned for from the start of the financial year.
This situation was reflected in the Extraordinary Council Meeting of 29 December, where the governing team put forward for approval a new Reconocimiento Extrajudicial de Créditos (extrajudicial recognition of debts), including an additional €18,000 in payments for «Espectáculos y Eventos» (shows and events). This type of procedure, designed to be exceptional, has become a routine practice for giving legal cover to expenditure incurred without sufficient budget allocation.
The problem lies not only in the amount spent, but in the management model behind it: budgets are set far below what is ultimately spent and are then corrected through extrajudicial recognitions, emptying the municipal budget itself of meaning and weakening economic and political oversight.
Added to this are other items included in the same file, such as the €14,278 earmarked for maintenance of the area around the Castillo de la Duquesa, work that, barring a documented technical emergency of which nothing is currently known, could have been planned within the ordinary budgets, following the proper procedures and avoiding yet another recourse to exceptional measures.
The repetition of these practices raises serious doubts about the Town Hall’s budgetary discipline, as well as about the governing team’s ability to anticipate foreseeable expenditure and prioritise public resources properly. Fiestas are part of the town’s social life, but they cannot be funded by disregarding budgetary limits or by normalising deviations that go well beyond what is reasonable.
