On May 27, at 11:50 AM, workers from Murcia’s Parks and Gardens service received a message via the WhatsApp group they usually use to communicate among colleagues and service managers. However, the request made to them had little to do with their usual tasks: “Everyone go home and come back changed and with your cars to Víctor Villegas. You have to be in the auditorium until two.” The Víctor Villegas is the autonomous community’s auditorium and congress center, and that day it was hosting the Murcia Smart City Talent congress, organized by the Murcia City Council. The city’s PSOE has publicly denounced this strange order this week, emphasizing that the service, which is subcontracted to an external company, depends on the Department of Urban Development, whose head, José Guillén, participated in the congress in a round table, an awards ceremony, and the reading of conclusions.
For the PSOE spokesperson in Murcia, Ginés Ruiz, the situation is “extremely serious,” not so much because the workers had to abandon their duties in the middle of the workday to attend this event, but because the request reflects the way the municipal government, of the PP, operates. “They have taken over the City Council as if it were something private, as if it were an extension of the party where everything is at the service of the personal and political interests of those who form the government team,” he stressed. The PSOE made this situation public after receiving anonymous complaints from workers. None of them wanted to discuss this issue with this newspaper, as they feel very pressured within the service.
The Parks and Gardens contract has been provided since 2019 by the UTE of companies STV Gestión and Actúa, and it is one of the most important for the Murcia City Council, both in terms of the number of workers (around 230) and economic value (around 60 million euros in its last tender). The contract has been expired since December 2023 and operates under a forced extension due to being an essential service, and for the moment, the City Council has not put it out for public tender again.
EL PAÍS has had access to the messages sent to the work group by one of its managers who, in response to the annoyed replies from some workers about the urgency of the instruction and having to go to a congress in the middle of the workday, explains: “I didn’t know anything either. Whoever can.” In the messages, this person indicates that workers must attend the congress “changed,” without their work uniform, and in their own vehicles and not those of the service.
One of the workers insists on asking if they have to go “in street clothes,” and the manager confirms it. He also suggests that if they live far away, they should go home for lunch and return for the afternoon session of the congress, from 3:30 PM to 7:00 PM, while those already in the conference room should wait there until 2:15 PM because “Pepe is giving some awards.” He then attaches a screenshot of the day’s program announcing that at that time, councilor José Guillén will present the Smart City Awards.
In a contact with the media this Thursday, the area councilor, José Guillén, denied that he had given any order for service employees to attend the congress, which he assured was already at full capacity “several days before.” He argued that it was the concessionaire company itself that contacted his team to ask if workers could attend after realizing there were “some free spots.” “We thought it was great that the Parks and Gardens workers could attend these sessions because they were intimately related to their work, and it is something that the company will have to explain if it decides to invite its workers to freely and voluntarily decide whether or not to go to some sessions,” he assured. He flatly denied that the City Council had given an order to bring workers to the auditorium to “fill seats.”
The two companies that form the UTE managing the service, STV Gestión and Actúa, have declined to comment on this matter or confirm whether the instructions to the workers were an initiative of the companies or the City Council.
For the PSOE, councilor Guillén should also resign or be dismissed by the mayor, Rebeca Pérez, as the facts now denounced add to a long list of reprehensible behaviors.