
1 month · 10 summary articles
A judge in Madrid has opened a criminal investigation into Gema García, the PSOE councillor for Culture in Parla, and Iván del Pino, a party adviser, for allegedly rigging a public tender to award festival bull-running events to a company linked to del Pino. The case centres on a 2025 contract for the *encierros* in which prosecutors allege García included a fraudulent bid in the official documentation, a move that constitutes documentary forgery under Spanish law .
The investigation, disclosed on 25 June 2026, follows a formal complaint that accused the pair of colluding to bypass competitive bidding. García, who was appointed second-in-command on the PSOE municipal list in 2019 by former mayor José Soria, is accused of falsifying records to justify awarding the contract to an entity connected to del Pino. Soria, who led Parla for 19 years until 2023, has become a liability for PSOE regional leader Luis Martínez in Castilla y León, where the ongoing scandal threatens to overshadow the party’s preparations for the 2027 regional election .
In a separate administrative probe, the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency has demanded that Valencia’s city council produce a full audit of every open selection process for the Local Police, excluding only the rank-and-file agent category. The request, issued the same day, follows whistleblower complaints about protracted delays in promotions and exams for inspectors, intendants and chief inspectors. Officials must now detail how many officers are serving on temporary “improvement” assignments beyond the statutory two-year limit—currently 40 mid-ranking commanders—and justify why recruitment rounds have stalled .
The agency’s dossier also asks for the exact stage of each stalled procedure—whether candidates are awaiting scoring, physical tests or psychological evaluations—and the legal or technical grounds for the delays. The move underscores growing frustration among aspirants and within the force, where chronic vacancies and a two-year-old legal battle between commanders have left the corps operating with outdated scales and chronic interim staffing. The Anti-Fraud Agency, which handles nearly half of its cases on selection-process complaints, has become a favoured channel for officers to challenge opaque municipal hiring practices.
Elsewhere, Hong Kong authorities have arrested three booksellers on suspicion of selling seditious publications, the latest in a series of detentions under the city’s national-security law .
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