The Street Cleaning Department of the Mijas Town Hall has, so far in 2026, opened seven disciplinary proceedings against the FCC Barbetium joint venture, the contractor awarded the street cleaning and waste collection service, imposing penalties totalling more than 6 million euros, and has also deducted 306,942 euros from its monthly invoices for services it failed to provide. 

Two of the cases are classified as very serious: the repeated failure to provide scheduled routine services and the breach of obligations regarding the implementation of the service and the facilities agreed in the contract, the latter carrying a penalty of  7 per cent of the contract price, approximately 6.09 million euros out of a total value of 87 million, stated the council.

 

The Department carries out daily checks and assures that “all the services covered by the contract are recorded and inventoried, so that the Town Hall knows, on a daily basis, what services have been provided and under what conditions; monitoring that results in a monthly balance when the contractor submits its certification”.

“Here we do not act on impressions; we act on a daily record, service by service, with the documentation in front of us”, said the councillor for Street Cleaning, Eloy Belmonte (Vox).

In the eight certifications processed between January and August, 286,718 euros have been deducted for services not carried out (169,133 for waste collection and 117,586 for street cleaning) and a further 20,224 euros in penalties under the Quality Plan. July and August alone account for 132,929 euros, 43 per cent of the total amount deducted this year. “If a service has not been provided, the first step is simply not to pay for it; the formal proceedings come later, because that failure to comply also incurs a cost for the resident”, noted Belmonte.

The 6 million euro fine for failure to fulfil implementation obligations was imposed last May, when proceedings began and the period for submitting representations opened. The company has not responded to the claims, and the case is continuing, pending the relevant municipal department’s enforcement of the fine, the Town Hall emphasised. They also added that the proceedings processed this year attribute to the contractor the repeated failure to provide scheduled services, breach of obligations regarding the roll-out of the service and the agreed facilities, and failure to fulfil the duty to report breakdowns of vehicles assigned to the service.

 

The councillor wished to highlight the scale of the company: “We are not dealing with a small firm overwhelmed by a contract that is too big for it, but with a leading multinational in its sector”, the councillor added.

Belmonte pointed out that from the time the contract was awarded in 2022 until November 2023, the previous govenrment team, formed by the PSOE and Ciudadanos, “did not audit a single service, with 100 per cent of the certifications paid without any review whatsoever, and not a single penalty or deduction was processed”, he clarified.

These are the figures available to date, the Town Hall emphasised, “although there are proceedings currently still underway. Disciplinary procedures require time and effort, and are not resolved overnight”.

The contract, awarded in 2022 by the previous government team, also includes an annual price review, the local executive pointed out, which is automatically applied and mandatory for the Town Hall regardless of the level of compliance with which the service is provided. “This is the contract that Mijas inherited and which this Department has to manage”, explained Belmonte.

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