For another year, the difference between what Alicante City Council budgets and what it actually implements grows. In 2024, budget execution for investments was 37.51%, a decrease from 39.14% in 2023 (with accounts carried over from the previous year) and 39.13% in 2022.
This is another conclusion drawn from the report of the municipal auditor, who is in charge of examining the City Council’s accounts at the end of each fiscal year. In addition to the necessity to develop an adjustment plan for noncompliance with the spending regulation and the high-ranking official’s objections to contract splitting, low budget compliance data have emerged. In this context, the documents show that Chapter 6 of the budget (the one allocated to investments) called for a 95.9 million euro expenditure in 2024. Of this amount, around 36 million euros were eventually invested, leaving over 60 million euros “left over” as treasury surpluses.
This figure is added to other amounts that the City Council has failed to execute in previous years, such as the 61.6 million that was not invested in 2023 or the more than 98.9 million from the previous year, 2022, when the City Council was controlled by the bipartisan PP and Ciudadanos coalition. The PSOE cites a set of data that demonstrates the local executive’s “negligence and paralysis”. Ana Barceló, the party’s representative on the Alicante City Council, stated that “the data reveals that Barcala promises a lot but does little to address the problems that concern Alicante residents and resolve the serious deficiencies in the neighbourhood.”
“Recycled” projects.
Regarding the projects, the Socialist councillor points out that “what we see is the result of an accounting trick in which investments constantly appear and disappear, with certain projects announced up to twenty times but never implemented.” Barceló blames this to the fact that “the mayor is stuck in a state of neglect and paralysis,” as “this is the only way to explain why Barceló is leaving almost €60 million unspent in a city with so many shortcomings.”
In this context, the Socialist also mentions the 2025 budget, in which a significant amount of the investments indicated by Barcala prior to the ratification of the accounts were already represented in previous years. The mayor revealed 25 million euros in initiatives in September 2024, 85% of which were promises made earlier.
Among the projects highlighted by the municipal executive for 2025: the expansion of the municipal cemetery (budgeted at 5.2 million); the construction of the sports pavilion in Tómbola (1.8 million); the remodelling of the Local Police station in Playa de San Juan (just over three million); the construction of the flood-prone La Almadraba park (2.8 million); the second phase of the redevelopment of Avenida de Niza (1 million); and more than four million for sid
Other projects under consideration include the comprehensive renovation of Plaza de San Blas and surrounding streets (€4.5 million), the renovation of the former Abaseis cinemas, with an initial investment of nearly €400,000, the Rafael Pastor sports hall (€1.1 million), and the JoaquÃn Villar athletics stadium track (€1.3 million).
These investments total roughly €25 million, and according to the Barcala CEO, they indicate that “the planned investment level is being maintained.” However, little over €21.2 million pertains to projects that were previously promised in the 2024 financial statements and should have been completed last year.
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