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Last month we told you about the mess that occurred on the island of Formentera after knowing that none of the concessions on the island’s beaches would return to the companies that managed it until now, almost all of them family-owned, and would now be managed by large investors, thus evidencing a change of model on the island.
As we saw in a previous article, the design of the competition to qualify for licenses left the way open to much larger companies, with more economic muscle and from outside the island, thus leaving family-owned companies in the lurch adn forced to reinvent themselves into another business in order to survive. Logically, this has created a situation of alarm when seeing that, surely, it is just the beginning of other changes that are expected in the coming months and years. And the main complaint presented by the island businessmen is that they have been in charge of managing the island’s tourism for several decades, which pretends to focus on familiar and environmentally respectful tourism, but now companies from outside come and are in charge of managing it as they wish.
The economic criterion plays against small businessmen
Likewise, discontent increased when seeing that the criteria for renewing concessions had changed, thus benefiting large companies by valuing the economic offer presented at one third of the total score.
It is clear that it has been a decisive factor, seeing that each and every one of the local businessmen has lost each and every one of the beach concessions they had for years, and this directly affects family businesses and benefits larger and more complex companies with greater purchasing power.
The tender for beach businesses reaches the courts
After several demonstrations by the local population of Formentera and a great situation of unrest on their part, this week two companies that had opted for one of the concessions have presented a contentious administrative appeal to the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands, with the purpose of requesting nullity of the contest. The appeal is based on the fact that the annulment should be granted because, once the process to award the concessions began, the administration changed the rules of the game. By doing so late, many had already submitted their offer, without being able to take into account that new evaluation criteria were applied in the required report.
These criteria directly affected the way the Consell scored all the applicants’ proposals. For this reason, both plaintiff companies have requested the contentious-administrative chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands to agree, as a precautionary measure, the suspension of all the contested acts and the procedure for awarding the contract for the exploitation of seasonal services on the beaches of Formentera.
Faced with this situation, the Formentera Council has been forced to force an extraordinary plenary session whose sole objective will be to debate a proposal relating to the extension of temporary authorizations for beaches 2013-2021, until October 31 of this year, 2022. .
