These are the rules for public tenders, based on free competition, but not all relationships between administrations and service providers necessarily have to go through a tender. There are other legal figures that allow for profiling contracts without resorting to "finger-pointing" awards. For example, certain services can be valued for non-profit entities or insertion companies, as is the case with some gardening or postal services. There is also the option of agreements, such as the one linking the Cine Club Torroellenc to the management of the Cinema Montgrí, which has been owned by the City Council for over 40 years. Or the situation of stallholders in municipal markets, such as the wholesalers at MercaGirona, to whom the Girona City Council has now provided legal security with a concession until 2037, setting conditions that guarantee they are proximity producers. The same applies to stallholders at the Mercat del Lleó.
Beyond Truffaut: when the public tender price makes the difference
The cracks in the tendering system are multiple, from a micro engineering company winning the internationalization plan of the Girona City Council to the printing of a local magazine in León
GironaThe public sector contract law is based on the principles of free competition and equal opportunities. Any company, entity, or person from all over Catalonia can submit bids for public administration tenders. This also applies to those from the Spanish State and any country in the European Union. The awarding bodies are very demanding and do not accept any criteria that discriminate on the grounds of origin or nationality. However, these public tenders, which are necessary to guarantee transparency and prevent favoritism, sometimes result in surprising awards, with decisions that are difficult for citizens and local businesses to understand.
In Girona, the case of the Truffaut cinema
In Girona, there has recently been a lot of dust raised by the The Girona Magazine was printed in Lleó
The Girona Magazine is a publication that publishes articles every two months on all types of topics related to the Girona regions. It depends on the Diputación de Girona and all its activities go out to tender, from management and coordination to printing or design. Now, precisely, the management and coordination of the publication are to be renewed, and a company from Barcelona has submitted a bid for the public tender, so the paradox could arise that the Girona Magazine is coordinated from Barcelona. The printing contract has also been renewed, which currently falls to Imprenta Pagès, from Anglès. But, between 2021 and 2025, the company awarded this service was Editorial MIC, from León, so every two months the layouts were sent to Castilla and the copies were returned printed to Girona.
"The truth is that we are often affected by the fact that the market is open to all of Spain, we accept it with a certain resignation. We would prefer Catalan administrations to prioritize the territory's business fabric more, especially considering that other autonomous communities actively work to retain tenders within their scope," the Girona owner of a printing company explains to el ARA. And he continues: "This is perceived as a loss of opportunities and saddens the entire graphic arts sector, especially considering that subsequent transport involves a higher environmental footprint."
Local communication at 100 km distance
Another paradigmatic case is that of the institutional communication of small town halls, which do not have the budget to hire permanent staff and put the service out to tender. On many occasions, large companies located kilometers away end up winning, also with the lowest economic offer. In the Girona regions, for example, the communication of La Jonquera, Begur, Roses, Camprodon, or Pals is handled by the same company from Sant Cugat del Vallès. The Llagosterense journalist Marc Sureda, founding partner of the local communication company Notidig and the portal Canal Ajuntament, knows the issue well. With his team and several collaborators on the ground, he works with a dozen Girona town halls, with populations between 100 and 15,000 inhabitants. "There are some things that can be done remotely, but the wording of clauses should be improved to favor a response capacity within 30 minutes or an operating radius of 30 or 40 km. It makes no sense to have to travel 250 km to take a photograph. These things should be scored, just like the language," he argues. The procurement law does allow for the incorporation of conditions like these in the tender documents, but many town hall technicians and secretaries opt for the generic formula and avoid them.
Furthermore, Sureda defends the importance of proximity in the communication of a local entity: "It is a delicate enough matter not to know the territory, how institutions work, the reality of the municipality, who governs, the entities... All this is not valued." And, regarding the weight of downward economic valuation, he states: "There are those who blow up prices and thus a quality service cannot be offered. When the price accounts for 50% or 60%, I no longer participate. With this sector we will not get rich, but it must be paid well so that the numbers work out for everyone." Finally, the professional regrets that when a tender is renewed, many bidders take the previous winner's price as a reference, adding the CPI and lowering it a little more, and so on every 4 years. "We are throwing stones at our own roof," he concludes.
An engineering company wins an international cooperation plan
In some tenders, the price can account for up to 100% of the scoring, meaning the unequivocally cheapest economic offer wins, provided it does not involve an unreasonably low bid. This is the case of a minor contract of less than €15,000 for the strategic plan for international relations from 2027 to 2037 by the Girona City Council for the next 10 years, which was put out to public tender in October 2025. 8 applicants presented themselves and a micro-enterprise from Sant Feliu de Pallerols won... an engineering one! With no visible track record in this field, it will be responsible for developing two internationalization master plans for 10 years. The second in the ranking was an innovation company from Asturias and only half of the applicants had an accredited track record in internationalization plans. Along the same lines, another recent controversial case is the tender for the sale of books in Girona schools, designed by the Diputación, which last November was won by an investment company from Barcelona, with no experience in the sector, a fact that has caused much discontent among booksellers, who are calling for “common sense” when drawing up the tender specifications.
"If you enter the public tender rules, welcome to free competition," states Josep Maria Aguirre, a professor at the University of Girona specializing in administrative law. Aguirre explains that, to evaluate tenders, the law distinguishes between automatically evaluable criteria and criteria with room for subjectivity. The most common automatic criterion is the economic offer, and it often ends up carrying more weight, precisely to guarantee equal opportunities and avoid subjective evaluations. "As an automatic criterion, price causes the fewest problems, but then many companies opt to submit very tight bids, and this reduces the margin so much that, in some cases, the winning companies cannot assume the costs and withdraw when the service is to be executed," concludes the professor.