The unpleasant photo accompanying this news story is of a business owned by people from Las Palmas in southern Gran Canaria, a fitting location in the Eurozone's premier sun and beach destination. It's yet another example of Las Palmas's insensitivity towards Maspalomas. Las Palmas is devouring the budget of southern Gran Canaria, resulting in the Canary Islands' economic capital having, instead of a municipal budget, a declaration of administrative sovereignty that defies the laws of financial thermodynamics. The town's budget isn't about politics; it's about administrative taxidermy. And the root of it all lies in Las Palmas, which is currently holding its carnival, copied from Maspalomas and funded by money from southern Gran Canaria. Even Lidl, which has a presence in much of southern Gran Canaria, has joined in this collective deception.
In this ecosystem, aesthetics and basic maintenance devour strategic planning. While the town boasts a battalion of 14 gardeners (including both skilled and unskilled workers, most of whom are in the process of being "regularized" to secure their golden retirements among the flowerbeds), its skeletal technical execution capacity is appalling. The municipality has only 5 engineers on its entire staff (including industrial, civil, and public works engineers), and of these, two are either vacant or temporarily filled. It's the triumph of pruning over concrete: there are almost three people assigned to tending flowers for every technician qualified to sign off on a critical infrastructure project. This disproportion condemns the town hall to permanent technical paralysis, forcing it to outsource any complex thinking while maintaining an army of workers for surface tasks.
The hierarchy of real power is hidden in the Destination Supplement Levels (NCD), where surrealism reaches its peak. A Folklore Monitor (Level 18) or a Sociocultural Animator has a higher pay status than a General Administration Assistant (Level 14) who manages legal files. In San Bartolomé, sociocultural "noise" is highly valued: the 29 Monitors and Animators enjoy destination levels that equate them to seasoned professionals with decades of experience. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file staff who actually handle the paperwork, the 42 Administrative Assistants, are relegated to the lowest levels of the pay scale, unless they have been favored with the budgetary "transformation." It is a structure designed to reward the political visibility of the monitor at the expense of the administrative worker's productive obscurity. The height of this administrative schizophrenia: (38 Social Workers and 120 Police Officers).
What the south generates doesn't stay in the south of Gran Canaria. The start of this staffing process is a harsh dose of reality: while the positions of Secretary and Deputy Secretary (Level 30) are bureaucratic wastelands (0 filled, 2 vacant), the foundation of the system is protected by an army of manual trades that defy any logic of modern outsourcing. Here, control of the afterlife is a priority, with a Gravedigger on duty, while the Market Warden position remains vacant. This is an administration that has decided it's more important to have a Sign Painter and a Workshop Foreman on the payroll than the nationally certified professionals who should be signing the minutes.
The true scale of this municipal "Noah's Ark" becomes clear when you count the heads of its infantry. The second paragraph of this story is written in numbers: the municipality deploys a shock force of 120 local police officers (including agents, officers, and sub-inspectors) to patrol the southern sun, supported by 42 firefighters and fire service commanders (including agents, corporals, and sergeants). But where this Leviathan truly becomes a welfare institution is in the offices: 38 social workers and 28 early childhood educators form a protection network that would put any European capital to shame. This deployment is complemented by 86 Administrative and Auxiliary staff (divided between civil servants and contract workers) and a curious unit of 7 Teleoperators, who together with the 29 Monitors (of Folklore, Theater, Sports and Painting), confirm that the Villa is not a town hall, but a gigantic social services and leisure agency protected by 12 Mayor's Advisors who, of course, have full occupancy.
The bizarre nature of the situation doesn't end with the numbers; it extends to the legal transformation. The phenomenon of "civil servantization" affects more than 60 positions, a massive transfer of skilled workers to civil servant status that turns bricklayers, gardeners, and drivers into permanent fixtures of the city. To further complicate the accounting precariousness, the administration has resorted to outright fragmentation: 38 positions for Administrative Assistant and Bricklayer are marked at "1/2 BUDGET," a piecemeal approach that allows them to employ two people for the cost of one, stretching Chapter I (the budget) to unimaginable limits.
