The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has once again censured, for the seventh time, the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council for allowing two Local Police officers to assume senior roles in the Unipol group, a unit that, even though no longer operational in practice, is still part of the municipal RPT.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TSJC dismissed the appeal filed by the legal services of the Chicharrero council on May 31, 2024, against the ruling issued by the Contentious Court number 1 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on July 31, 2023, which determined that both officers could not carry out their duties until the deployment process through secondment was completed (notified on 2-17-2021).
The TSJC highlights that the “lower court decision annulled the contested decree with reasoning that is hard to dispute” and reminds that “the filling of City Council positions must be done through a mandatory transfer competition, following the principles of publicity, merit, and capacity. The existence of urgent and non-deferrable reasons that would have prevented the use of this recruitment process has not been proven and, in any case, even in urgent situations, one cannot ignore other deployment methods such as temporary secondment, which, likewise, should adhere to the principles of publicity, merit, and capacity.”
The order further states that “the failure to follow legal procedures for position appointments leads to the annulment of article 47 of Law 39/2015” and specifies that “the appeal was based on the incorrect actions of the city council”, directing them to cover the costs.
The CSIF union reported the City Council in 2021 for the discretionary selection of Unipol officers without conducting any competitive process. A legal dispute, which already had six unfavourable judgments, now has one more in favour of the claimants, who accuse the council of “disregarding democracy.”
