Getting your salary without having to go to work is the golden dream of every average Spaniard. A Cádiz official has made it a reality. He has spent the last six years without going to work, while still receiving his salary. His bosses discovered him when they were going to give him an award for 20 years of service.

Cadiz’s ‘ghost official’Although this story happened almost ten years ago, its nature is still surprising and the story of the “ghost officer of Cádiz” has resonated in the international media, even going beyond our borders. Times or North American digital Political.

In reality, the case of this Cádiz official is less an Iberian picaresque than a serious communication problem between public institutions that has left the official in a state of uncertainty that he knew how to exploit for many years. According to the court, the official remained without recourse to his job for six years. According to the council, there would have been at least fourteen.

Supported by meritocracy The story begins in 1990, when Joaquín García, an engineer and brother-in-law of Fermín Moral, then a PSOE mayoral candidate, began his official work in the Cádiz City Council. As they point out here WorldJoaquín had gained experience in the field working for Dragados in Algeria and Venezuela. This experience meant that, after assuming the office of mayor, his brother-in-law appointed him Technical Director of the Environment, a position he held until 1996.

“We sent him to Aguas de Cádiz, which belongs to the municipality, so that he would be in charge of the affairs of La Martona, the hub where the city’s sewage and rainwater go,” Jorge Blas Fernández told El Mundo, who was deputy mayor of the Cádiz Municipal Council between 1995 and 2015 and discoverer of the scam.

Introduced and forgotten. In 1996, Joaquín took a position at Aguas de Cádiz, a public company run by the Cádiz municipal council. “They gave him an office in the Aguas de Cádiz building and he stayed there. Until one day [más de una década después] I remembered him and thought: Where is this guy? Will he still be there? Will he retire? Is he dead?” Blas Fernández explained.

The deputy mayor began investigating the whereabouts of this senior officer, finding that he was still receiving his salary from the city council, and called the Aguas de Cádiz administration to inquire about him. “In Aguas de Cádiz they told me that they didn’t know anything there, that they thought I had returned to the City Hall,” he said. World Jorge Blas Fernández. When he became suspicious about his whereabouts, the deputy mayor decided to call him directly. “He told me he was away on business and I asked him to come and see me. ‘What are you doing? What did you do yesterday? What about the month before?’ “He didn’t know how to answer.”

From rewarded to rewarded. The initial interest in finding out Joaquín’s whereabouts becomes paradoxical, at least when the facts are known: “We thought that the manager of Aguas de Cádiz was supervising him, but that was not the case. We discovered this when we were about to give the official his 20-year service plaque,” ​​said the deputy mayor. Of course, in addition to the official not being awarded, a disciplinary case was opened against him for absenteeism, which resulted in the court’s decision sentencing him to pay a fine of 26,920.93 euros.

On a strange note, the director of Aguas de Cádiz, who was responsible for Joaquín García’s filing, was holding the office right outside, claiming he had not seen the engineer for years. The council could not dismiss the official because by the time the sentence was made public, Joaquín had already retired.

No, but she is being harassedThe engineer from Cádiz always denied the real reason, arguing before the judge that “although it is true that he does not go to his office from 8am to 3pm, he goes every day”. The official claimed that he devoted his days to studying in his office and that he was subjected to political harassment, accusing the political opposition of wanting to “get rid of him” because of his family ties to the previous socialist mayor.

During the engineer’s time as a civil servant, the council paid almost half a million euros into his payroll. Asked during the hearing why he did not report the abuse, the engineer said: “He had a family to support and was afraid he would not be able to find another job at his age.”

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