The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, of the PP, assured last Thursday in parliamentary headquarters, during the control session of the Valencian Government that his partner, Vanesa Soler, “approved his opposition” to be a civil servant. According to documentation accessed by this newspaper, the woman acquired her status as a career civil servant through the extraordinary stabilization process opened in 2021 for interim employees who had been in the same position for years, without passing an exam. In the case of Soler, by merit-based competition, with the only requirement of seniority or experience.
Sources from the Presidency of the Generalitat ratified this Sunday the words of the president in Les Corts and they assured this newspaper that Pérez Llorca’s partner passed some exams, but in a selective process in 2008 and was subsequently appointed interim official of the Finestrat City Council. From the moment she passes the selection process and is appointed, she becomes part of the Administration as a civil servant, takes possession of the position, is sworn into office and assumes the same basic obligations as any public employee, the same sources pointed out. When oppositions were called in 2008, Pérez Llorca was not mayor of the Alicante town (he was between 2015 and 2025) nor did he have any relationship with it, they added.
The head of the Consell insisted in Les Corts Valencianes on the correctness of the process in the face of complaints from the opposition, who accuse the Valencia Provincial Council, chaired by the PP, of making “a tailored suit” for Soler to facilitate her recent transfer from the Alicante town of Finestrat, where she had consolidated her position as a career civil servant in 2023, to the Valencian capital, where the couple has established their family residence.
The details of the transfer emerged last Monday. The Valencia Provincial Council, chaired by Vicente Mompó, of the PP, approved on March 3 the service commission – a mechanism that allows an official to occupy a public position other than the one earned – for Soler. The resolution justified the hiring of the candidate, who had administrative status in Finestrat, for the area of assistance to municipalities of the provincial institution due to the “urgent need” to occupy the position and with a salary of 52,070 euros gross per year, according to the salary tables of the provincial corporation.
The Provincial Council pointed out that it had acted with “absolute administrative normality” and explained that the official will perform the duties of management secretary. Regarding the urgency of his hiring, they point out that it responds to an “operational reality” since the area to which he has been assigned “lacked a key figure for its ordinary functioning.”
In defense of his partner and questioned by the socialist parliamentary spokesperson José Muñoz, the Valencian president stated on Thursday in the aforementioned parliamentary control session that his partner had been working in the public administration for many years. “You have asked for a service commission, by the way, in the last seven years of the Botànic government you approved more than 11,500; and it seems that the bad one is the one you approve for a woman who is a civil servant, who approved her opposition, but has the original sin for the left of being the partner of the president of the Generalitat,” he attacked. “That is what I do not tolerate and I find it indecent,” he stressed, thus responding to the accusations of the PSPV and Compromís of “enchufismo” and “nepotism.”
The Alicante City Council opened a competitive selection process in 2022 for several of the interims who had been working at the City Council for a long time, including the couple from presidentwithin the stabilization process to reduce the interim in the Spanish public administration after the slap on the wrist from the Court of Justice of the European Union. In September 2023, the list of candidates was raised to the Finestrat mayor’s office in order of score for their appointment as career civil servants, among whom was Soler. All process documentation is available on the transparency portal of the electronic headquarters of the Finestrat city council.
The council itself concluded the process in a public statement on January 12, 2024, in which it explained that nine municipal “workers” had taken office as part of the stabilization process. They were temporary public employees who had held their positions uninterruptedly since before January 1, 2016. Four of them, who performed administrative tasks, “become career civil servants of the General Administration,” stated the letter with statements from the then mayor Juanfran Pérez Llorca, congratulating them. The note was even accompanied by a photograph where the consolidated officials, including Soler, appeared with the first mayor.
The scuffle between the government and opposition parties over the president’s women’s service commission has not stopped since the news broke a week ago. The PP spokesperson in the Cortes, Fernando Pastor, insisted that “it is a common practice in the Public Service” and consists of transferring a position from a public position that one owns to another administration. “Where is the problem?” Pastor launched at the opposition. Vox spoke in a similar sense.
The socialist spokesperson for the Valencia Provincial Council, Carlos Fernández Bielsa, expressed, however, his “perplexity and astonishment” at this hiring, which in his opinion demonstrates “a very clear way of proceeding by this Provincial Council, that they create a farmhouse,” and which is “neither ethical nor aesthetic.” He explained that they have requested information about the procedure to analyze whether the law has been complied with and they will act accordingly. In Compromís, its parliamentary spokesperson, Joan Baldoví, harshly criticized the resort to the “urgent need” procedure, while denouncing that the Provincial Council “created 40 places in June of last year but only took out one on February 28, the one for 52,000 euros and with a six-day deadline to apply.”
Sources from the Generalitat, on the other hand, indicate that Pérez Llorca’s partner was earning around 40,000 euros, after accumulating years of seniority in the Finestrat city council, at the time of requesting the service commission, and not the figure of 25,000 euros that has emerged.
