Case notes

A procurement panel cannot be outsourced: an external «technical office» may not sit on it

The Aragon Technological Institute, a contracting authority that is not a public administration, expects more tenders as R&D investment grows and cannot take on staff. It asks the Board whether it may sign agreements with other public bodies to fill its panels, or hire a «technical office» to run the files and sit on the panel and on the expert committees. The Board treats the two separately. For bodies of this kind a panel is optional, but once set up its rules apply (it refers to TACRC Decision 969/2021) and, in Aragon, so does Article 92 of Law 11/2023 rather than Article 326 of the Public Sector Contracts Act. An agreement with the regional administration is possible only as an exception: it must be fully justified that staff cannot be increased, the peak in workload must be limited in time, and the impartiality of the staff and the contracting body's control must be secured. The normal answer, it says, is more posts, because powers cannot be waived (Article 8 of Law 40/2015). The technical office is ruled out. The panel's proposal is the main reasoning behind the award, so the panel's decision-making power cannot be handed to third parties or outside bodies, and a private firm is not bound in the same way by the conflict of interest rules or by the duties of the Civil Service Statute. The panel is an administrative body and a contract to select its members is never possible. Support in handling the files can come from an in-house unit (Article 90 of Law 11/2023). For bidders: check who signs the panel's minutes. If staff from a hired consultancy appear, this report is the argument.

Price review in transport concessions: where a standard formula exists, it applies as it stands and is not copied from the budget

Concession for the AR-02 Ayala interurban bus service of the Provincial Council of Álava: ten years, EUR 49.4 million estimated value and periodic price review in the tender documents. Above five million, the report under Article 9.7 of Royal Decree 55/2017 is mandatory, and in the Basque Country it is issued by the Standing Committee of the Advisory Board. The Board accepts the review: the investment payback period is ten years, above the five required by Article 103.2 of the Public Sector Contracts Act. But it corrects the approach. Where the Council of Ministers has approved a standard formula (here formula 1 of Annex II to Royal Decree 75/2018: coach, short route, use of a bus station), neither a bespoke formula nor different weightings are allowed. That drivers account for 30.84 % of first year costs does not change the formula's 0.27, which reflects an efficient operator and not this concession's accounts. The review is not a general update of the budget: insurance, tolls, urea or depot rent are not updated separately, and depreciation, financing costs, overheads and industrial profit are never reviewable. The 1.30 % a year in the economic study is an assumption, not a clause. There are also two time limits: the first review one year after the contract is signed (a service concession does not need 20 % performed), and none once the payback period is over; the Article 10 calculation must stay in the file and be redone if the assumptions change. For bidders in a transport concession: check the formula in the tender documents against Royal Decree 75/2018. If it departs from the coefficients or promises to update items the formula does not cover, raise the defect before bidding.

Delivering the design fifteen days early is not 'quality' unless the file explains what it achieves: the whole scoring grid falls, and with it the 51% of article 145.4

Beas de Granada was tendering, in seven lots, the drafting of building designs, site supervision and health and safety coordination for works funded by the 2026 FMA programme, estimated value EUR 127,300. Among the automatic 'quality' criteria, five points for shortening the design phase: 2 for 5 days, 3.5 for 10 and 5 for 15. The authority's reason was that earlier delivery helps meet the funding milestones. The review body applies Supreme Court judgment 169/2026 (ECLI:ES:TS:2026:793): a shorter delivery time can be a quality criterion in an intellectual service, but only if it has a real functional bearing on the contract, and that has to be reasoned. It was not. A low weighting and a closed scale make the criterion proportionate, not qualitative; and the appellant pointed out that the grant rules themselves exclude the drafting of designs from the 'start of material execution', and that their milestones are measured in years. Without those five points, quality no longer reaches the 51% minimum that art. 145.4 LCSP sets for intellectual services, so the whole Annex X is annulled and the bidding period reopens. Two pointers for the new procedure: calling a criterion an 'improvement' does not bring it under art. 145.7, and a review of the design by a second professional other than the author is a valid quality criterion.

The ten days of article 150.2 run from receipt unless the request itself, not the committee's minutes, was published that same day; and if the platform closes early, the electronic registry will do

Framework agreement for IT equipment, Fuengirola City Council, lot 2, EUR 54,000. The top-ranked bidder, with 100 points, was excluded for filing its pre-award documents late. The council counted the period from dispatch, because the evaluation committee's minutes had been published on the buyer profile. The review body reads the fifteenth additional provision of the LCSP literally: counting from dispatch requires that the act being notified is published on the same day. That act was the decree containing the request, and there is no record it was published; the minutes only said the bidder 'shall be requested' and, on top of that, referred to lot 3. Without that publication the period runs from receipt on the DEHU notification system, and the documents arrived within it. A second, very practical point: the tender documents required the PLACSP platform, but the step already showed as closed, so the company filed through the electronic registry and by email. That is valid, because early closure of the mandatory channel cannot be held against the bidder. The award is annulled and the procedure goes back to before the exclusion, with the documents treated as filed on time. If it happens to you, keep a screenshot of the closed step and file through the registry straight away.

The insurer refused to issue the surety bond on the very day of the request: without fault on the bidder's part there is no article 150.2 penalty

Beach lifeguard and rescue service in Conil de la Frontera, estimated value EUR 1.64 million. The proposed bidder did not lodge the EUR 37,081.61 performance guarantee and the council imposed a penalty of EUR 24,721.07. First: that penalty can be brought before the special review body, because it is a qualified procedural act within the award procedure. Second, the merits. Art. 109.1 LCSP only triggers the consequences of art. 150.2 if the guarantee is missing for reasons attributable to the bidder, and the review body treats the withdrawal that art. 150.2 presumes as a rebuttable presumption. The company rebutted it with documents dated at each step: it had asked the insurer for the bond a month earlier, the insurer confirmed the paperwork was in order and, on the day of the request, said it would not issue it; a bank certified that a guarantee would take a month or more; and the company told the council six days later, without running out the clock. The council's own report did not question its good faith and had no evidence that an alternative existed. Attributability, the review body says, requires foreseeability, the ability to avoid the failure, and the absence of a supervening cause or external obstacle. The penalty is annulled, and there is no unjustified withdrawal for the purposes of a debarment either. The lesson: arrange the guarantee before you are proposed, and keep every email.

A panel with no chair, no secretary and no comptroller is not enough to annul the award ex officio

Works to improve a municipal sports hall in Llerena, under the simplified open procedure with price as the only award criterion. The tender documents referred to a technical unit; on the very day the bids were opened, the mayor set up a standing procurement panel and convened it for 1 pm. The minutes are signed by three members only: there is no record that the chair, the secretary or the comptroller attended, nor any appointed substitutes. The panel proposes the award, the award is made in April and nobody challenges it. In July, after a report from the comptroller's office, the council opens ex officio review of the panel's constitution and of the award under Article 47.1(e) of Law 39/2015. The Commission accepts that an essential rule was breached (Articles 326.6 and 159.4 and the second additional provision of the Public Sector Contracts Act) but still says no. The panel's proposal neither ends the administrative procedure nor creates rights, so it cannot be reviewed ex officio on its own. Nor does the nullity of the award follow automatically from that of the proposal. It must be shown that the defect was capable of altering the will of the collegiate body or the outcome of the procedure: scoring errors, a different ranking, harm to a bidder. With a single automatic criterion and nothing of the kind in the file, the award stands. For a successful tenderer facing ex officio review over panel defects, this is the argument. For the losing bidder the lesson runs the other way: challenge the panel's composition in a special appeal and in time, because afterwards it is very hard.

If you keep supplying within the contract term and the budget runs out, there is no verbal contract to annul: you are paid under the contract

Electricity supply to a university residence in Cáceres under a call-off contract from the regional framework agreement, from 1 December 2022 to 19 April 2023. The rise in power prices exhausts the budget after the first two invoices; nobody amends the contract or awards a new call-off, and the supplier keeps supplying. February, March and April remain unpaid: EUR 33,696.46. The regional ministry opens ex officio review to declare a verbal contract void under Article 47.1(e) of Law 39/2015 and then pay. The Commission advises against it. The contract was in force for those months and was never terminated, so there was no new contract at all: there was a shortfall of budget during performance, which is not a ground of nullity. Nor is the void act identified. It says plainly that ex officio review cannot be the general route for overcoming the objections an officer meets when paying an invoice. As an alternative it cites Council of State Opinion 706/2021: in a contractual setting, contractual liability is the preferred route, and payment should as a rule follow the contract price. For the contractor the difference matters. Payment through nullity means arguing about compensation and possibly losing the margin; payment under the contract means the agreed price. When you are told your invoices are going to ex officio review, first check whether the service was within the contract term.

Design contracts: the 25 % under Article 314 cannot be claimed on the back of a generic demand to deliver

Minor contract to draft the design for refurbishing an elderly care centre in Olivenza, worth EUR 11,886 net of VAT with a four month term (two for the outline design). The outline design arrives more than three months late with only drawings and a budget; the detailed design, in July 2025, five months late and incomplete. In November the authority formally demands delivery of the complete design within fifteen working days and gets no reply. It starts termination for delay under Article 211.1(d) and for failure to correct defects, and claims EUR 2,971.50: the 25 % of the price that Article 314.3 of the Public Sector Contracts Act sets for designs whose defects are not remedied. The contractor objects but does not deny the delay. The Commission accepts termination for culpable delay: the term is essential and its mere expiry is enough. Not the 25 %, though. Article 314 requires a demand to remedy that identifies the specific defects in the design, a period of up to two months, and reasons for terminating rather than granting more time. Here the demand was rather generic, asked for delivery rather than correction and came when the term had expired in February. With no guarantee lodged there is nothing to forfeit, and damages must be set in separate proceedings under Article 113 of the Regulations, with a hearing and proof of real loss. For design consultants: if you are charged the 25 %, ask to see the demand. If it does not point to the defects, the penalty falls even if termination stands.

Signing the draft final certificate does not lock in payment: a €634,825 exceptional price revision dropped out

A road surfacing contractor resurfaced a motorway section near Zaragoza for just over €6 million. It applied for the exceptional price revision introduced by Royal Decree-law 3/2022, the regional roads office backed it, and in November 2022 the contractor and the site engineers signed a final certificate that included €634,825.27 for the revision. Shortly afterwards the State Attorney's office found that the minimum twelve months of performance needed to show an impact on the contract economics had not been met, and in February 2023 the Ministry approved a different final certificate covering the extra works but not the revision. The contractor sued to enforce the first one and lost. The court held that the November document was only a proposal, not a final certificate, because the competent body had not signed it. Two procedural slips also counted against the contractor: it neither produced that document with its claim nor asked for the administrative file to be completed under Article 55.1 of the Administrative Jurisdiction Act, and it never argued why the revision was in fact due. The takeaway: signing at the closing stage of a works contract is a step in the procedure, not an acknowledgment of debt, and when the authority changes its view the merits must be fought, not just the earlier figure. Costs capped at €3,000.

Judgment of the Spanish National High Court (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 8) 392/2026 of 12 June 2026, appeal 347/2023 · ECLI:ES:AN:2026:2750

Third-party damage in an outsourced public service: the authority and its contractor are jointly liable, and sorting out who pays comes later

During a forest fire on Gran Canaria, two heavy-lift helicopters that the Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition hires from an aerial services contractor drew water at least 56 times from a farm's irrigation reservoir and damaged it. Each defendant pointed elsewhere: the State said the island council was directing the firefighting, and the contractor said it was following the incident commander's orders. The court set aside the rejection of the claim and held the State, its contractor and the island council jointly and severally liable for €45,326.01 plus interest. Nobody had shown whether the damage came from the order to draw water or from the way the service was performed, and the point of the case was to compensate the injured third party, not to settle the internal relationship between the defendants. The limitation defence also failed: the claim was lodged in time with a town council, and the owner could not be penalised because it took more than a year to reach the Ministry. The court noted that Article 196(3) of the Public Sector Contracts Act lets a third party ask the contracting authority to rule on which side is responsible, which stops the limitation clock, but does not require it. For contractors: acting on instructions is no defence unless it is proved on the file, and insurance cover or allocation clauses only matter later, in the internal accounts between the defendants.

Judgment of the Spanish National High Court (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 1) 238/2026 of 12 June 2026, appeal 1528/2022 · ECLI:ES:AN:2026:2639

Six criteria fall in the Cabezón de la Sal parks tender: company age, registrations the law already requires, machinery 'in the company's name' and twenty points of undefined improvements

Cleaning and maintenance of parks and gardens, estimated value EUR 214,392.80; decided by the TACRC under its agreement with Cantabria. The appellant, a bidder, challenged almost the whole award criteria clause and wins on all but one point. First, more than ten years in gardening: that is a feature of the firm, not of the tender, and belongs to selection, which the documents already covered. Only the experience of the staff assigned to the contract can be scored (art. 145.2.2 LCSP), and only if it is shown to improve performance significantly; the explanatory report did not even mention the criterion. Note the authority's reply: admitting that the reasoning was 'perhaps' insufficient is not an acceptance of the claim, because it still defends the criterion, so the Tribunal rules on the merits. Second, points for registration in the ROPO and RETO plant protection registers and for a pesticide applicator card: these are duties under Royal Decree 1311/2012 for anyone carrying out the treatments the technical specifications already require. Third, machinery 'in the company's name': the list matches the minimum in the specifications, so what is scored is ownership, and formal ownership adds nothing to how the service is performed. It is disproportionate against a bidder that leases the same equipment. Fourth, twenty points of improvements with no content, limits or weighting (art. 145.7); the clarification note does not cure it, since a clarification may remove doubts but cannot add essential elements missing from the documents. The complaint about 'certificates of satisfactory performance' fails: they add nothing to art. 90.1.a). Under art. 57.2 the approval of the tender file falls with the clauses.

The automatic criterion was scored on CV and social security record; the winner did not file the record and the board asked for it 'as a correction': the Tribunal orders scoring without it

Comprehensive technical maintenance of INTA centres (Ministry of Defence), lot 2, estimated value EUR 1.79 million. The runner-up appeals and wins on two grounds. The first is reasons: the award linked to a proposal showing only the totals of the automatic criteria, without the partial scores and without the report on the judgement-based criterion. That falls short of the minimum the LCSP requires. The second ground goes further. The tender summary scored the experience of the proposed staff using their CVs and social security employment records. The winner did not include the employment records for the staff of one of the centres and the board requested them as a correction, relying on the clause allowing defects in the price envelope to be corrected. The Tribunal cuts this off at the root: the documents were not defective, they had simply not been filed. Providing later what proves an automatic criterion is a supplement to the tender, barred by equal treatment (it cites its Decision 1041/2024). The award is annulled and the procedure goes back to score that criterion again for that centre, ignoring what was filed after the request. One point is left open: the authority admitted in its report that, when correcting, the winner had replaced one of the workers it had offered, but since no one raised it in the appeal the Tribunal does not rule on it. For appellants: if the documents say which document a criterion is scored on and a rival did not file it, correction is not the way in.

The 'Equality in the Company' label can earn points, but not in any contract: in security services for a government building in Badajoz, with no justification in the file, it is annulled

Security and surveillance of the multi-service government building in Badajoz, EUR 185,640, tendered by the Government Delegation in Extremadura. The sector's trade association, which has standing as a representative business organisation (art. 48 LCSP), challenges an automatic criterion: six points for holding the 'Equality in the Company' label. The decision does not ban the label. It traces its own case law: in 2018 it rejected it as a feature of the firm as a whole; later it accepted it for home care (Decision 974/2023) and municipal concierge services (Decision 1042/2026), in line with the CJEU judgment of 5 March 2026, case C-210/24, which looks at how labour intensive the service is and at its users. But it requires two things: that staff conditions are decisive for the quality of that particular service, and that the file gives reasons for it (arts. 116.4.c and 145), avoiding rhetorical or stock arguments. Here neither the explanatory report nor the tender documents said anything, and the reply to the appeal only discussed how the company works in general, without linking the label to better surveillance by the assigned staff. The Tribunal adds that a security service is not comparable to the cases where it accepted the label. The criterion and the approval of the documents are annulled, with the procedure sent back. Anyone challenging a social criterion of this kind should go to the explanatory report: if it does not explain the link with that contract, the criterion falls even if it was accepted in another one.

If the council answers your objections with new technical reports, you are entitled to see them: the advisory body halts the termination

Minor works contract to improve a municipal road, worth EUR 27,619.90 plus VAT with a two month term. Work stops at the end of October, the term expires in November and the council starts termination for the contractor's fault, with delay penalties and a reservation of the cost of re-tendering the outstanding works. The contractor objects: the project prices were far below market, the quotes it obtained tripled them for some items, and that is the authority's responsibility under Article 100 of the Public Sector Contracts Act. To rebut this, the council commissions two technical reports justifying the prices, but does so after the hearing and does not disclose them. The Council does not rule on the merits. Those reports concern a central point of the dispute and the contractor could not challenge them, in breach of Article 82.1 of Law 39/2015, which places the hearing at the end of the investigation. The hearing, it recalls, is no mere formality. The report of the municipal comptroller required by Article 114.3 of the local government consolidated text is also missing, and the contractor was not told the maximum time limit for a decision or, when it was suspended, the date on which the opinion was requested. Outcome: go back, disclose the reports, hold a new hearing and request a new opinion. For anyone acting for a contractor, the lesson is to ask for the file before the opinion and check whether anything was added after the objections. And watch the clock: the Council recalls that the eight month maximum period resumes when the opinion is received.

Abnormally low tenders: the Supreme Court will decide how far a judge may second-guess a finding that a bid is not viable

Aragon's regional government rejected a bid for lot 8 of its intercity coach concession as abnormally low and not viable, and the Aragon public procurement review body upheld the exclusion (Decision 20/2023 of 1 March). The Aragon High Court reversed it (Judgment 262/2025 of 21 July). In its view, assessing viability is not a matter of technical discretion but a rule-bound exercise carried out against the feasibility study and the tender documents, and the bid held up because the bidder was under no duty to prove, before award, the side business it planned to run with the vehicles. The region appealed, arguing that the court replaced the technical assessment without identifying any manifest error or arbitrariness, and that it accepted a forward-looking assumption, the shared use of the coaches, without objective and verifiable data. The admissions section grants leave under Article 88.2.c of the Administrative Jurisdiction Act, given the knock-on effect on many tender procedures, and frames the issue as whether judicial review extends to that assessment or whether it falls within the contracting authority's technical discretion. The provision to be construed is Article 149(4) and (6) of the Public Sector Contracts Act, and the order points to Supreme Court judgment 426/2026 of 9 April and to the Court of Justice ruling of 15 September 2022 (C-669/20). Practical upshot: the Aragon court's reasoning can still be relied on, but only while flagging that it is under appeal; and an explanation of a low price that rests on revenue not yet earned is exactly what is in dispute, so it should be backed by figures that can be checked.

Order of the Spanish Supreme Court (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 1) of 7 October 2026, cassation appeal 7613/2025 · ECLI:ES:TS:2026:8966A

A clause saying that without the document the bidder gets zero points does not prevent asking for the missing certificate: declared experience backed by the social security record can be cured

Running the tourist information office of the Island Council of La Palma in Santa Cruz de La Palma, estimated value EUR 591,745.78. The automatic experience criterion gave up to 14 points and required two documents together: the social security employment record and a certificate of duties from the employer, and the tender documents added that without them zero points would be given. The appellant supplied a team list, CVs stating where and when each person had worked, and employment records, but no certificates of duties. The first technical reports awarded it the 14 points and proposed asking for what was missing; the evaluation board refused to request anything, the final report removed the points and the contract went to another bidder. The Tribunal does two things. First, it agrees with the board that the points could not be awarded without the document: correcting that score was not a change of approach but the correction of an error. Second, and this is the useful part, it holds that the gap could be cured: asking the bidder to prove what it had already declared does not alter its tender, and refusing would be a rigorist reading of formal requirements contrary to the Supreme Court's anti-formalist case law, even though the clause says zero points. The opportunity must be offered to every bidder in the same position, but not to one that merely wrote 'more than 4 years' per member without saying how many or who they were, because filling that in would amount to a new tender. The award is annulled and the procedure goes back to before the automatic criteria were scored, so that proof of the declared experience can be requested.

AENA called it a 'clarification' to extend mobile coverage from indoor areas to the whole site of sixteen airports: the Tribunal compares the specifications before and after and annuls the change

Roll-out of a 4G/5G multi-operator mobile network at first and second tier airports, estimated value EUR 125.3 million, a utilities contract governed by Royal Decree-law 3/2020. Halfway through the bidding period AENA published an amendment to the technical specifications and granted seven more days. An operator that had not bid challenged it, and the Tribunal accepts its standing because the amendment, with so little time, made bidding harder. AENA argued it merely clarified a scope already foreseen: the original text referred to outdoor antennas and to remote units for indoor, outdoor or mixed environments. That is not enough. The Tribunal requires a material, not a nominal, test: compare what the contractor had to do before and after. Before, outdoor coverage was corrective and confined to specific areas, and the binding indicator was measured over 100% of the indoor areas of terminals and car parks; afterwards the same standard applies to 100% of the airport site, with new documentary burdens. The decision sets out three tiers of changes to tender documents: a clerical error, which requires nothing; a significant amendment under art. 136.2 LCSP (here its twin, art. 60.4 of Royal Decree-law 3/2020), which requires a proportionate extension of the deadline; and a change that redefines the subject matter, which requires starting again under art. 122.1. This change falls in the third tier: a genuine redefinition of the contract. Two points are useful for anyone challenging documents amended mid-way: the fact that the original text already mentioned the matter does not turn the change into a clarification, and the authority cannot rely on simply calling it one. The ruling annuls the amendment of 7 April; no fine for reckless appeal.

If the authority's own report admits that other equipment could perform equally well, specifications that omit 'or equivalent' are annulled

Supply of equipment for the Valencian air pollution monitoring network, EUR 1,000,049.59 in four lots; decided by the TACRC under its agreement with the regional government. A bidder challenged the technical specifications of lots 1 and 4: a data acquisition system required to work from -30 to +60 degrees although it sits inside air-conditioned cabins, and a sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide analyser with a stack of parameters (converter, ranges, drift, USB port) that, according to its catalogue comparison, almost no manufacturer meets at once. What tipped the balance was not the comparison but the authority's own report: defending the specifications, it accepted that a technically equivalent solution could be considered or admitted. For the Tribunal this confirms that sections 6.4 and 7.2 describe one particular solution where others are possible, and art. 126.6 LCSP, read with the CJEU's DYKA judgment (C-424/23), is not limited to brand names: it covers a configuration that, by stacking and closing parameters, has the same effect. Without the words 'or equivalent' or any clause allowing equivalence to be proved, both sections fall and, with them, the approval of the tender documents (art. 57.2). The bidder loses on the rest: 20 points for a longer warranty are a life-cycle criterion (art. 145.6) and the incumbent maintainer's advantage was hypothetical; limiting experience to supplies under the same CPV code is a route art. 89.1.a) allows; and a general declaration that equivalents are admitted throughout the documents cannot be obtained. A caution when reading it: the eighth ground reasons that the CPV complaint fails yet ends by 'upholding the appeal on this point'; the operative part does not annul that clause, so it is a slip.

Scoring ISO certificates or licences the firm already holds, without explaining in the justification report what they add to the contract, is selection disguised as an award criterion

Music lessons at the municipal music school of Cuarte de Huerva, estimated value EUR 472,120. The tender documents were challenged by a company that never submitted a bid, and the review body accepts its standing because it attacks conditions that restrict competition. Three criteria fall. First, 15 points for holding authorisation to run official music examinations: the contract is for non-formal teaching and the technical specifications do not provide for preparing anyone for entrance tests, so a prior attribute of the bidder is scored without saying how it would reach the classroom. Second, 5 points for ISO 9001 and another 5 for a corporate social responsibility certificate: certificates can be award criteria, the Tribunal says, but only if the justification report and the tender documents explain their link to the service; otherwise they are a disguised selection criterion. Here the mere holding of the certificates was being scored. Third, the 15 qualitative points for the 'human team': the documents set no minimum qualification, no assessable experience and no method, while requiring the winner to take over 17 teachers whose qualifications only the outgoing contractor knows. They also awarded 2.5 points for explaining how absences would be covered, which is every contractor's duty and not a merit. The most useful point for challenging tender documents: what the authority explains afterwards, in its report on the appeal or in answers to questions the tender documents did not regulate (art. 138.3 LCSP), cannot rescue a criterion that the article 116 justification report did not support. By contrast, the transfer of staff data in the annex (seniority, contract, category, hours and salary) is held sufficient for article 130. Clauses 6.2.b) and 7.2 of the administrative specifications and the contract notice are annulled; if the council still needs the service, it must tender again with corrected documents.

What was already in the project, even if missing from the budget, is not an unforeseeable circumstance: out of the modification

Fourth modification of works to repair a storm water tank, awarded by a public water company under a private contract in the utilities sector, governed by Royal Decree-law 3/2020. It raises the price by 10.12 % and the cumulative increase to 30.05 %; above 20 %, Article 112 of that text requires authorisation by the regional ministry and a prior opinion. The Commission accepts almost everything the works management proposes under Article 111.2(b) (supervening circumstances a diligent manager could not foresee), but removes one item: radar level meters. The technical report itself admitted that the project already included them, only without a price in the budget. For the Commission, tenderers should have taken that into account and could have asked; accepting it as unforeseen could breach free competition, because others may have included that cost in their bids. The modification must be recalculated without it. Two further points: the contractor's consent must be on file, a mention in a report is not enough, and the guarantee is adjusted on the cumulative total of all modifications, not only the last one, which on its own did not reach the 15 % set in the procurement documents. For tenderers, it is a useful argument against modifications that slip in through the back door what the procurement documents already required.

Challenging only the forfeiture of the guarantee is not opposing termination: the advisory body sends the file back

Security and surveillance services for a regional ministry, already extended. The company goes into insolvency with liquidation opened straight away, and the insolvency administrator admits it cannot cover the shifts or continue after 31 July. The ministry starts termination under Article 211.1(b) of the Public Sector Contracts Act and proposes not to return the guarantee. At the hearing, the administrator states that it does not oppose termination on that ground and only asks that the guarantee not be forfeited. The Commission does not rule on the merits: under Article 191 an opinion is mandatory when the contractor opposes termination, and here the disagreement is limited to its effects. It relies on the Supreme Court judgments of 9 January and 26 March 2012, which distinguish termination from its consequences, and on its own earlier decisions along the same lines. It returns the file so that the authority decides without an opinion. The lesson for contractors is tactical: if you want an advisory body to review your case, your submissions must challenge whether termination is justified at all, not only the guarantee or the settlement. A contractor who accepts the ground for termination loses that prior review.

Claiming cost overruns on public works: a setting-out record signed without reservations, overheads not calculated as a percentage, and stoppages without a formal suspension

The joint venture that built a metro line extension claimed more than EUR 22 million because the works went from 22 to 38 months, blaming the two modifications and flaws in the project. The Commission proposes rejecting everything, and its reasoning works as a list of mistakes to avoid. One: the joint venture signed the setting-out record without reservations and accepted the project, so it cannot later blame the authority for flaws it could see then. Two: signing the modifications in agreement with a completely generic reservation of rights is not enough; a modification does not by itself cause compensable loss, the specific damage must be proved case by case. Three: overheads and indirect costs are compensated if proved, but they cannot be presumed or calculated as a percentage of the construction budget, as it notes citing the Council of State. Four: if nobody ordered or requested a suspension and there is no record, the rules of Article 208.2 of the Public Sector Contracts Act do not apply to alleged stoppages. Five: inflation updating is a disguised price revision, which the procurement documents excluded; factoring is the contractor's own risk. The only thing left standing is late payment interest on interim certificates paid late, about EUR 541,000 according to the ministry itself, but through Articles 198 and 199, not as contractual liability.

Late-payment interest: thirty days is the rule, and an authority that wants sixty must produce the clause that grants them

A medical supplies company claimed EUR 1,670,081.79 in interest and EUR 693,760 in recovery costs from the Valencian health department for invoices settled late. The regional government did not dispute the deliveries, only the arithmetic: in its view it had thirty days to approve each invoice and a further thirty to pay. Section 5 reads Article 198.4 of the Public Sector Contracts Act together with Article 4 of Law 3/2004, Directive 2011/7/EU and the Court of Justice judgment of 20 October 2022 (C-585/20). Thirty days is the general rule; a sixty-day period, made of thirty for verification and thirty for payment, is an exception that must be laid down by statute or in the contract and objectively justified by the nature of the contract. The procedural consequence is what matters to a claimant: it is enough to submit a calculation based on the general rule, and an authority relying on sixty days has to produce the contract or provision that allows them. Interest runs until the money reaches the creditor's account (Supreme Court judgment 1206/2024 of 4 July). The claim succeeds in part, EUR 2,284,775.99, because the company accepted the objections to 620 invoices at the closing stage, and for that reason interest on interest is refused; in Judgment 475/2026, delivered the same day, the claim succeeds in full and compound interest is granted. A caveat before relying on it: on 23 September the Supreme Court gave the regional government leave to appeal in three cases decided by this same Section (Roj ATS 8594, 8595 and 8611/2026), two of them on works payment certificates, where Supreme Court judgment 1606/2025 had already applied thirty plus thirty. The point is open again, and any submission citing it should say so.

Judgment 473/2026 of the Valencia High Court of Justice (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 5), 30 June 2026, appeal 308/2025 · ECLI:ES:TSJCV:2026:2474

Stock shortage caused by the Middle East crisis: not force majeure, and offering to keep supplying at a 39 % higher price does not save the contract

Supply of nitrile gloves to two social care centres of the Gran Canaria island council, already in its second extension. From April 2026 the contractor failed to deliver four orders and announced it could not meet them in the short or medium term; the centres ran out of reserves for basic care. Opposing termination, it argued that the disruption of international supply chains caused by the Middle East conflict was unforeseeable, that penalties rather than termination were the proportionate response, and offered a modification under Article 205.2(b) of the Public Sector Contracts Act raising the price from EUR 2.40 to EUR 3.34 per box. The Council upholds termination under Article 211.1(f): raw material crises and transport difficulties fall within the contractor's own risk under Article 197, there is no factum principis because the price rise is not caused by the authority, and force majeure is not to be read broadly. On Article 205.2(b), a point worth having clear before raising it: the power to modify belongs to the authority, and using it in the face of an unforeseeable risk does not give the contractor a matching right to rebalancing. The proposal forfeits part of the guarantee, EUR 4,888, and the Council requires the decision to justify that figure and to answer the insurer's submissions. For contractors, the lesson is to ask for rebalancing or modification before stopping deliveries, not to make delivery conditional on a new price.

An in-house entity may bid in other authorities' tenders, but only marginally and without carrying into its bid what it earns from in-house assignments

A town council with two municipal companies, in-house entities that run water supply and car parks, asked whether they could bid in tenders of other authorities. The Board says yes, on conditions that matter above all to the private firm that finds one of them as a competitor. The ban in Article 32.2(d) of the Public Sector Contracts Act only closes the tenders of the contracting authority that controls the entity, and open market activity must stay below 20 %. But the Board goes further: taking part in public tenders must be marginal and exceptional. The key is competitive neutrality. If the fees for in-house assignments cover more than real costs there is cross-subsidy, which may be State aid and allows bids no private operator can match; and being funded by users' payments does not necessarily mean its funding is not public. It therefore recommends separate accounts for free market activity and for in-house work. For anyone competing against an in-house entity, the report is a checklist: check its activity percentage, ask for verification of whether an abnormally low bid is explained by aid, and ask whether it keeps those separate accounts. With a limit the report itself takes from the Supreme Court: receiving public funds is not, on its own, enough to exclude it.

Submitting nothing in response to the Article 150.2 request is withdrawal of the bid with a 3 % penalty, even if the two months to award have passed

Home care service in three lots, processed in advance of the budget year. The bid committee proposed a joint venture, gave it 15 working days by mistake instead of 10, and the joint venture submitted no document and lodged no guarantee: it only said it had not been able to obtain them. At the hearing before the penalty it changed its argument and relied on Article 158.4 of the Public Sector Contracts Act, because more than two months had passed since the first envelope was opened without an award, and in that case a tenderer may withdraw without consequences. The Board rejects it. The 3 % penalty is kept for total or serious failures, not for defective documents, which can be corrected; but here there was nothing to correct, and invoking Article 158.4 at that stage shows a tactic to avoid the penalty. The penalty applies. Its own Report 3/2023 marks the line: there the tenderer had complied in full, including forming the joint venture, and withdrew because of the delay, and no penalty was due. On advance processing: the contract may be awarded subject to the condition that funds become available, and the ordinary award deadlines apply. For tenderers, if you are going to withdraw because the two months have passed, say so before the Article 150.2 request, not after failing to answer it.

A request that only says the certificate 'lacks a valid signature' does not allow exclusion for what it did not say, even if the tenderer did not reply in time

Framework agreement of the Foundation for the Internationalisation of Public Administrations for support to the Amazonia programme, estimated value EUR 200,000. A self-employed professional proved technical capacity with a certificate of satisfactory performance issued by the foundation itself for work done for it. The bid committee gave her three days to provide another certificate because the one submitted lacked a valid signature, without saying why. She did not reply: the e-mail alert of the electronic notification went to her spam folder and she only opened it on 9 June, although it had been made available on 18 May. On that point the review body rejects her case outright. The e-mail alert is merely informative, the spam filter is the recipient's business and, after ten calendar days unopened, the notification is deemed refused under Article 43.2 of Law 39/2015. But it allows the appeal on another ground: failing to answer a request only counts against the tenderer if the document really was defective. The procurement documents accepted invoices, contracts or certificates of satisfactory performance without requiring an electronic signature or a specific signatory, and the signatory's lack of authority appears for the first time in the exclusion decision, never having been raised in the request. Since the work was done for the authority itself, which does not deny it, excluding her on that basis is disproportionate. The exclusion is annulled and she must be readmitted. Two lessons: check the spam folder while a tender is running, and if you are excluded for an unanswered request, check whether the defect was real and whether you were told what it was.

Abnormally low tender in a parking concession: the winner counted VAT as income and, once removed, the bid makes a loss

Concession of the regulated parking service of Comillas city council, estimated value EUR 4,837,050. The winning bid was presumed abnormally low because of the fee offered; the bidder justified it, the municipal economist reported in favour and the bid committee accepted it. The runner-up appealed without seeing the full justification, which was confidential, relying on a mismatch: income rose 80% with only 4.74% more spaces. The review body examined the whole file and agrees. The administrative clauses set every tariff both with and without VAT (EUR 0.86 and 0.71 per hour on the beach and in the centre) and the feasibility study built its accounts on the figures without VAT; the winner calculated its income with the VAT-inclusive tariffs. VAT charged to users is not income of the concessionaire. Tenderers may make their own assumptions on spaces, occupancy, payment rate or efficiency, but they may not count as income what is not income. Correcting that item alone, the operation makes a loss in every year. A later change to the bylaw declaring the charge subject to VAT did not help, because it kept the same amounts. Nor is a fresh report allowed: the award is annulled and the bid excluded. A useful preliminary point: the committee's acceptance of the justification is not a qualifying procedural act, so it need not be challenged separately and can be attacked together with the award.

Excluded for offering EUR 0.031 where the maximum was 0.03: the annex calculated the total with 0.033 and the ambiguity cannot be held against the tenderer

Supply of cleaning and hygiene products for the migrant centres in Mislata, Alcobendas and Vallecas, tendered by the Directorate-General for Migration Management, EUR 678,325.06 in six lots. The documents excluded any bid with a unit price above the maximum. In lot 6, for a type of bag, Annex II set 1,825 units, a maximum price of EUR 0.03 and a total of EUR 60.23. The company offered 0.031 and was excluded. The review body checks what the appellant argued: EUR 60.23 is 1,825 times 0.033, and 0.033 was the value in the cell of the Excel bid form published on the buyer profile. It was not the only product calculated with more than two decimals, and the documents did not require bids in two decimals. At 0.031 the total did not reach EUR 60.23. Faced with that contradiction it applies Article 1288 of the Civil Code: ambiguous clauses cannot favour the party that caused the ambiguity, and must be read in favour of the companies that interpreted them reasonably. The exclusion and the award of lot 6 are annulled and the bid must be assessed. For anyone bidding on unit prices: if the annex does not add up, the multiplication is the best argument, and it pays to keep the published Excel file.

Turismo de Galicia corrected the page limit on the very day the tenderer submitted its bid: the Galician review body annuls the whole tender

Support service for the expropriations needed for works on the Way of Saint James, tendered by the Turismo de Galicia agency, EUR 2,988,545.42. The documents limited to 20 pages the report for one award criterion based on value judgement. A consortium asked whether the limit applied only to criterion 3, the only one with four sections, and the reply published on 30 March confirmed it. On 1 April, the same day it submitted its bid and with the deadline about to expire over public holidays, the authority published a 'correction notice' saying the opposite. The pages beyond 20 were not assessed, the bid missed the minimum score and was excluded. The review body allows the appeal: the clause was clear, the reply to the question confirmed it and, under Article 138.3 LCSP, changing the criterion afterwards breaches good faith and legitimate expectations. A tenderer who relies on the wording of the documents, confirmed by a published answer, cannot be penalised for bidding accordingly. The remedy is what matters: it does not readmit the appellant, which would be unfair to those who accepted the change, but annuls the whole procedure, because the bids were not drawn up under the same rules. A change of that kind requires the deadline to be extended (Article 136.2 LCSP).

San Ramón festivities in Ferrol: a budget with no industrial profit cannot be saved by saying the profit is hidden in contingencies and wages

Ferrol city council tendered the infrastructure, technical production, lighting and sound for the 2026 San Ramón festivities, estimated value EUR 369,777.06. A company that had not bid but works in the sector, and had been the contractor in previous years, challenged the documents; the review body accepts its standing. The budget breakdown included no industrial profit. The report of the consultancy that drafted the documents argued that profit existed anyway, covered by the 3% contingency item and by labour costs calculated with a generous margin, and cited decisions of the TACRC and of the Galician body itself that the review body could not find or that said the opposite. It allows the appeal: profit is not a cost, Article 101.2 LCSP requires it to be counted, and the authority does not even quantify the margin. Contingencies are there to cover contingencies, and arguing now that staff costs were overstated shows that wage costs were not properly broken down, as Article 100.2 requires. The economic figures in clause 3 of the contract summary are annulled. The complaint that technical items were underfunded fails, because the appellant must provide its own figures, and so does the missing gender breakdown, which had no effect on the amount.

Design and build for the Cine Chimisay: a report that copies the figures in the tender documents does not justify the budget, and both documents and award fall

Puerto de la Cruz city council tendered the design and the refurbishment works of the former Cine Chimisay together, with an estimated value of EUR 4,997,280 excluding IGIC. The Tenerife, La Gomera and El Hierro Association of Architects challenged it on two fronts. The first, that joint design-and-build under Article 234 LCSP must be exceptional and was not here, fails: the report gave specific reasons (a structure shared with a hotel, logistics in a pedestrian street, a listed building next door, technical uncertainty, stage equipment) and the association's different technical opinion is not enough against technical discretion. The second succeeds. The supporting report merely reproduced clause 3 of the administrative clauses word for word, without explaining where the base budget and the estimated value came from, in breach of Article 116.4(d). Those justifications 'must be made before the call for tenders', and the defect cannot be cured by whatever the authority explains later in its report on the appeal. The review body does not even look at whether the amount was sufficient. The tender documents are annulled and, with them, the award the council had made on 2 October while the appeal was still pending. One nuance when citing it: the reasoning speaks of voidability and the operative part declares nullity.

Equality plan expired during the tender: exclusion upheld, even though the new one was registered later with backdated effect

An appeal that fails, but worth reading before bidding in a long procedure. Cleaning of six therapeutic communities run by the Andalusian Social Services and Dependency Agency, EUR 636,972.30. The company's equality plan was registered in REGCON and in force when the tender period closed on 2 March, but it expired on 30 May. When the evaluation board checked the documents in July it no longer was, and the bid was excluded from lots 1 and 3. The new plan was registered on 16 September, stated to be in force from 30 June. That did not help. Reading the tender clause together with those requiring conditions to be maintained until the contract is concluded, the review body holds that the plan 'must still be in force at the time of the request' under Article 150.2. Later registration is a supervening fact, and not a mere formality: it is part of the requirement in Article 71.1(d) LCSP as amended by Organic Law 2/2024. The practical point is to have the next plan registered before the old one lapses, not after the request arrives. Between 30 May and 30 June the company had no plan at all, a gap the review body did not even need to examine.

A published, binding answer to bidders' questions can relax what the technical specifications required

Framework agreement of the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) for chest drainage catheters and containers, 19 lots. For one item in lot 15, worth EUR 722,410.58, the bid was excluded on two grounds: the container held 2,100 ml where the specifications asked for 2,500, and the data sheet did not expressly say it was DEHP-free. The ICS conceded, and the review body accepts the concession because it is not manifestly unlawful. The reasons are what matter. An answer to bidders' questions, binding under the contract summary sheet, had accepted containers 'of up to 2,500', and the data sheet said latex-free and PVC-free, which by the authority's own account means no DEHP. Where it is not shown that the product fails to comply, the bid is presumed to conform. The procedure goes back to before the evaluation, which is possible here because all criteria were formula-based. The appellant asked to be awarded the item and does not get that.

When the contracting authority ignores the review body's order: the enforcement application and its limits

A short and unusual decision. In March, Decision 60/2026 annulled the withdrawal of the tender by the Castile and León Social Services Management Body for the leasing of multifunction printers, and ordered the procedure to be reopened. Months went by with no action, and the company that had won the appeal applied for enforcement. The authority did not reply, not even to the review body's renewed request. The application is upheld and the authority is required once again to report, with a reminder that the review body's decisions are 'immediately enforceable' (Article 59.2 LCSP). It also admits plainly what it cannot do: it 'lacks legal power to adopt coercive measures'. Against inaction, what remains is the administrative courts and, where appropriate, a damages claim. Useful so as not to expect from the review body what it cannot give: if the authority digs in, the next step is judicial, and the sooner the better.

A sole bid mistakenly labelled as a variant cannot be excluded without first asking for clarification

Framework agreement of the Navarre Health Service for hyperoxygenated fatty acids, lot 1. Variants were only accepted alongside a base bid, and the company filled in its offer annex on the variants sheet because, it said, the template itself led there. The board excluded it for submitting a variant without a base bid. But it had submitted a single technical solution, and the sample was labelled 'OB', base offer. In the proceedings the authority ended up admitting that nothing in the bid tied it to variant status, and the review body treats this as a concession. It still reasons on the merits: the conflict between the annex and the sample's delivery note could be clarified without changing the bid, since the product was clearly identified, and asking was actually necessary because there was only one bid. The exclusion is annulled and the procedure reopened. When citing it outside Navarre, bear in mind it is a special complaint decided under Regional Law 2/2018, not the LCSP, even though the case law on clarification it relies on, the Court of Justice's in C-336/12 and C-599/10, is the same.

Parent-company experience relied on under Article 75 counts for standing and also for the award criterion that copies it

Maintenance of green spaces and street trees in Sant Cebrià de Vallalta, EUR 660,392.88. The bidder, a company set up in 2022, relied on its parent's work for several municipalities to meet technical standing. The board accepted those certificates for standing but rejected them for the formula-based 'contractor experience' criterion, cutting the score from 30 to 10 points. The review body starts by faulting the tender documents: company experience is a standing requirement, and as an award criterion only the experience of the staff performing the contract is allowed, where their quality can significantly affect performance (Article 145.2.2 LCSP). But since the criterion mirrors the list of main services provided, Article 75 applies to it: if reliance on another entity's capacities was declared in envelope 1, it works for both purposes. Accepting the same documents for one and not the other it finds contradictory. It does not, however, give the 30 points sought; the certificates must be reassessed and the score reasoned.

Curing the evidence of experience does not allow the bidder to swap the projects it put forward

Channelling works on the Vinyals stream in Cabrera de Mar, EUR 5,323,438.32. The winning bidder came first by 0.48 points. For the experience criterion for the site manager and the foreman it had listed seven projects; when asked to link those people to the certified works, it kept the people and changed the projects: nine for the site manager, none of them among the original seven, and six for the foreman, with only one match. The review body separates what can be cured, completing the evidence of a fact already stated, from what cannot, replacing the works on which the experience was claimed, relying on the Court of Justice in Partner Apelski Dariusz (C-324/14) and SAG ELV Slovensko (C-599/10). It also criticises the authority for accepting the change without examining it, and the report for saying only that the documents were sufficient: even for a formula-based criterion the score must be reasoned. The winner is not excluded. The procedure goes back to the scoring of that criterion, disregarding the projects introduced at the cure stage, and with half a point between them that may be enough.

Reasons that only arrive with the report on the appeal do not count, and if the flaw lies in the judgement-based scoring the whole tender falls

Cleaning of the Joanot Martorell secondary school in Esplugues de Llobregat, EUR 103,872. The bidder ranked fourth appeals. The report awarding the 25 judgement-based points was brief and generic: on three sub-criteria there was not a single line about its bid, and on another, matters outside the tender documents had been taken into account, such as already knowing the school or the size of the company. The authority tried to fix it with individual reasons in its Article 56.2 report, which the review body rejects as too late. The interesting part is the consequence. The judgement-based scoring cannot be redone once the formula-based bids are known (Articles 139.2 and 146.2 LCSP), so upholding the appeal 'must entail annulling not only the award and the technical evaluation report but also, inherently, the entire tender procedure'. The operative part merely refers to the sixth legal ground, which is where this is said. For a bidder who finished well down the list, an appeal for lack of reasons thus becomes a second chance.

Equality plan approved but not registered when the tender closed: a debarment ground applies, but self-cleaning is available

Management of the municipal nursery schools of Pineda de Mar, EUR 4,471,945.52. The winning bidder's equality plan was in force until 17 May 2026, and it argued that the next one had already been signed with effect from 4 May; but it was not registered in REGCON until 16 August, after the tender deadline (9 June) and the award (27 July). The review body applies Article 71.1(d) LCSP as amended by Organic Law 2/2024: the plan must be in force and registered on the closing date for tenders and remain so until the contract is signed. It rejects the argument that, as a cooperative, a different register applied, because that was not proved. So far, a debarment ground. What is new comes next: Article 57(6) of Directive 2014/24/EU has direct effect, so the company may prove self-cleaning measures even though Article 72.5 LCSP confines them to debarments already declared (Court of Justice, RTS infra, C-387/19, and Vert Marine, C-472/19, among others). The purpose of the mechanism, it warns, is not to relax a legal obligation. Since the council merely accepted a certificate and a sworn statement without examining them, the procedure goes back to the Article 150.2 request so that those measures can be assessed. The appellant sought exclusion and, for now, does not get it. Read it alongside Andalusia Decision 667/2026, above.

A clause that penalises confidentiality claims by refusing to score the material empties Article 133 of content and is annulled

Home help services for Calahorra city council, estimated value EUR 8,010,240; the TACRC decides under its agreement with La Rioja. Clause 34 of the administrative clauses, repeated in Annex I, prohibited marking as confidential any document assessed under judgement-based criteria and warned that, if this was done, it would not be scored. The TACRC sees not a safeguard against blanket claims but a prior and absolute ban: 'a legal power of the bidder, subject to review and weighing by the contracting authority, becomes an automatic cause of losing points'. The authority argued that the evaluation report must be capable of being public; the answer is that this does not require the underlying documents to be disclosed, since the report 'can weigh the content of the bid with reasons while protecting them'. Article 133 itself already deals with abuse: require the bidder to specify what is confidential and decide with reasons. It relies on report 40/14 of the State Advisory Board on Procurement and on its own Decision 409/2023. The wording is annulled, the documents must be corrected and the tender period reopened. The clause is common in municipal tenders. One caution: the appellant had already bid, and the review body admitted its challenge to the documents without addressing the last paragraph of Article 50.1(b), which in principle bars it; do not count on that.

An 'own' collection centre within 100 km and 40 points for proximity: the requirement and the criteria are annulled

Wild boar trapping with meat recovery in Alzira, EUR 132,231.40; the TACRC decides under its agreement with the Valencian regional government. A trade association challenged the tender documents and wins on every point. The specifications required the contractor's own collection centre, licensed to handle large game, no more than 100 km away, and the administrative clauses gave 20 plus 20 points out of 100 for proximity of the facilities. The council's reasons, traceability, health and transport, justify having a centre available, not that the contractor must own it: a lease, a right of use or an arrangement with a third party could do, and to rule out third-party resources 'a generic appeal to the importance of the service is not enough'. Nor is the 100 km radius explained: some proximity may be desirable, but not why that figure rather than, say, maximum collection times. On the criteria it sets a rule worth taking into any appeal: 'the greater the competitive advantage linked to location, the heavier the burden of justification in the file'. The ownership requirement, the radius and the proximity criteria are annulled, and the documents must be corrected.

Call-off contract: the invitation cannot add conditions absent from the framework agreement's clauses, and the review body annuls the tender of its own motion

Cleaning of the building and machinery yards of the Segovia regional transport office, EUR 182,392.05, a call-off under the Castile and León cleaning framework agreement. The invitation said the EUR 5,000 for additional services could not be changed; the winning bidder offered less and the runner-up sought its exclusion. On that it loses, because the authority applied the framework's administrative clauses, which contain no such limit. But the review body opened a nullity procedure of its own motion and found that the invitation and an instruction of 25 February 2026 added a restriction the framework did not contain, so that some bidders complied with it and others did not. 'A contracting authority awarding a call-off contract cannot lay down in the invitation to submit a binding offer conditions restricting competition that were not provided for in the governing tender documents' (Articles 139 and 222.1 LCSP). It cites its Decision 98/2026, which had already partly annulled that instruction, and Decision 203/2026, covered here in September, which noted that the regional government's buyers are solving the same problem in different ways. When citing it, note that the operative part only says the appeal is upheld; the annulment of the tender is in the fourth legal ground.

Framework agreement: certificates required by the specifications must be proved at admission to the framework, not in the call-offs

Uniforms for Valladolid's municipal police and fire service, a framework agreement worth EUR 1,438,180; the challenge concerns the admission of suppliers to lot 4, bulletproof vests. One admitted supplier lacked the manufacturer's ISO 14001, and the technical report had treated its ISO 9001 as equivalent. The review body: the two standards 'are not equivalent, both being required cumulatively in the specifications'. Equivalence is possible (Articles 93, 94 and 127 LCSP), but it must be in the technical bid and reasoned, and the certificate produced in the appeal post-dates the tender deadline. Another lacked the OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certificate but had expressly declared it in its bid: that can be cured, not in the appeal pleadings but through the formal cure procedure. The authority argued that, since subcontracting was allowed, everything would be checked in the call-offs, and the review body rejects this: 'deferring it to the call-off contracts empties the legality review of the tender of content'. The procedure goes back to after envelope B was opened, for a reasoned report on the first supplier and a request to cure to the second, with exclusion if it fails to comply. The reasoning goes further than the operative part: if the first did not prove an equivalent in envelope B, its exclusion is automatic.

Calling it a 'clarification' does not make a second cure request lawful: the winning bidder is to be excluded

Staff transport between the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital and the Hospital del Sur, EUR 650,474. The winning bidder had filed documents signed by only one of its two joint directors. That was curable, and the board asked clearly for it to be put right, but the company did not do so. The board then sent a second request, which it called a clarification, asking for the same thing, and admitted the bid. The runner-up appealed. For the review body, 'the line between clarification and a second cure cannot be left to the label used by the board', and the principle against formalism does not give a right to cure the same defect twice when the first request was clear. To tell them apart it suggests asking whether that first request was clear, what was submitted, whether the defect is the same, and whether anything is genuinely clarified or what was not cured is simply completed. The award and the admission are annulled and the operative part, without sending the matter back to the board, orders the exclusion and the procedure to continue with the other bidders. The claims that the price offer was altered or bid secrecy breached are rejected.

Before treating a bid as withdrawn under Article 150.2 the bidder must be allowed to cure, and a consortium's standing is pooled without weighting

Support services for Barcelona's Municipal Social Welfare Council, lot 1, EUR 258,577.52. At the Article 150.2 stage the council treated the bids of the first and second-ranked bidders as withdrawn and awarded the lot to the third. Both appealed and both win, each on its own grounds. The first, a consortium of a cooperative and a sole trader, had its financial standing rejected. Treating a bid as withdrawn amounts to excluding it and is a last resort, so where there is doubt the bidder must be given the chance to cure or clarify. Two further useful points: requiring a sole trader to produce accounts legalised at the Commercial Registry goes beyond the law, since registration is optional for them (Article 19.1 of the Commercial Code), and a consortium meets the standing requirement regardless of each member's percentage share. The second was set aside for discrepancies between the experience declared in the formula-criteria envelope and what it proved later, on the basis of a report never notified to it. For reasons by reference to be valid (Article 88.6 of the Administrative Procedure Act), the bidder must have had access to that report before appealing. And on the merits, such discrepancies affect the score at most and do not justify exclusion. Neither gets the contract: the procedure goes back for a cure in one case and for a review of the score in the other.

Disclosing a formula-scored improvement in the technical proposal leads to exclusion if the evaluation report does not explain why it had no influence

Demand-responsive transport in Tenerife, lot 6 (technology platform and control centre), within an island council contract worth EUR 10,134,026.29. There was a yes-or-no formula-based improvement worth 5 points, on the incident management system, which belonged in envelope 3. In its technical proposal in envelope 2, the winning bidder expressly referred to the annex on that improvement, so the evaluator knew, without opening envelope 3, that it would take the 5 points. The tender documents did not exclude automatically for early disclosure: objectivity and equal treatment had to be affected. But the technical report said nothing about it, and the two companies that disclosed obtained the best scores for the proposal. The review body recalls the 'halo effect' described by the Aragon review body in Decision 59/2020: if the evaluator thought the disclosed information had no influence, 'it should have said so when issuing the evaluation report, which it did not do'. It adds that the bidder deserved the same treatment as another one excluded for putting price-related documents in envelope 2. The award is annulled and the winning bidder is to be excluded. Oddly, the other company that disclosed the same information, ranked third, does not appear in the operative part; and the order to exclude goes beyond reasoning that spoke of a lack of reasons.

If the authority receives more recent TUPE-type staff data during the tender, it must publish them and reopen the deadline

Maintenance of the facilities of Málaga Regional University Hospital, EUR 11,730,284.11. A trade union challenged the tender documents because the list of staff to be transferred included one person who had been dismissed and another who had died, and left out three. The review body keeps to its case law: the authority need only request the information from the outgoing contractor and make it available, 'without the contracting authority having to take on the task of fully verifying the employment situation'. But there was more here. During the appeal the hospital sent the review body an updated list with different data that it had not published, and once that information is in the authority's hands it must be published, because that is the purpose of Article 130.1. Annex C of the specifications as originally drafted is annulled, and the procedure goes back so that the updated list is published and a new period is given to submit, withdraw or replace bids. The other ground, that the budget's pay scales dated from 2024, fails: the report started from the 2025 collective agreement with increases for each year, and the union produced no calculation.

Hotel Oromana: the manager's experience cannot count twice, and a restricted procedure needs a scoring scale to shortlist candidates

Concession to operate the Hotel Oromana, owned by Alcalá de Guadaíra city council, through a restricted procedure, for up to forty years and an estimated value of EUR 29,583,285.72. The appellant, which had not bid, raised thirteen grounds and wins four, wholly or partly. The clause scoring as an award criterion the same experience of the hotel manager already required for standing is annulled, citing Lianakis (C-532/06). So is the shortlisting of candidates by greatest technical standing without a prior scale: in a restricted procedure the criteria for choosing whom to invite must be in the tender documents (Article 162.3 LCSP), and later explanations by the authority cannot fill the gap. Open-ended architectural improvements and the scoring of additional investment without a method for turning amounts into points are also partly annulled, because 'improvements must be defined in advance in the tender file'. The other nine grounds fail, some of them commonly tried: the term only needs a reasonable link to the investment (Article 29.6), not an exact match; choosing the restricted procedure does not require special circumstances; and the preliminary design of Article 248 belongs to works concessions. The operative part annuls 'the clauses cited in the sixth legal ground', which are not fully identified as regards the improvements, so implementation will not be straightforward.

A concession the review body refuses: if the authority did not check minimum requirements before scoring, the procedure for those lots falls

Digital pathology for the Andalusian Health Service's centres in Almería, group 4 (lots 9 and 10) of a EUR 9,409,200 contract run by Torrecárdenas University Hospital. Two companies bidding as a prospective consortium, ranked second, sought the winner's exclusion for failing three minimum technical requirements. The authority partly conceded and admitted something more: it had scored the bids without first checking the minimum requirements, and did the check after the appeal and only on the winning bid. The review body refuses the concession, because accepting it 'would amount to a manifest breach of the legal order' (Article 75.2 of the Administrative Courts Act): nobody knows whether the other bids complied, and checking only one breaks equal treatment. It neither excludes anyone nor awards to the appellant; it annuls the award and the procedure for group 4. A warning for appellants: complaining that the authority did not verify the minimums may end in a fresh tender rather than the contract. The operative part only says the appeal is upheld; the annulment of the procedure is in the seventh legal ground.

Uncapped improvements scored by units: tender documents worth EUR 31 million are annulled, and the clarification note does not save them

Street cleaning and waste collection for Colmenar Viejo, EUR 31,360,567.65. A trade association challenged the 'awareness campaigns' improvement criterion, 5 points spread over door-to-door days, information points, bags, magnets, videos and a digital handbook. Except for the handbook, nothing was capped: points were shared out pro rata from whoever offered the most units, so the maximum score depended on the bidders' own highest offer, with no mechanism against disproportionate offers (Article 145.7 LCSP). The council relied on the EUR 30,000 annual limit and on a clarification note requiring a costing report. Neither helps. Scoring was by units with no unit costs, and the note introduced a new rule, which amounts to amending the documents rather than clarifying them; hence it 'must be regarded as ineffective to cure the defect'. The tender documents are annulled. The reasoning also speaks of annulling the procedure, but the operative part stops at the documents.

Extending the tender deadline can also be challenged, and without an Article 136.2 ground it is annulled

Pneumatic waste collection in Galdakao. On 27 March the council had refused a bidder's request to extend the tender deadline, because none of the cases in Article 136.2 LCSP applied. On 10 April, by decree, it extended it by six working days. A company that had bid within the original period appealed. Can that be challenged? Yes: the decree 'is not an internal or preparatory act, nor one without external effects', but a decision altering an essential element of the tender, and it falls within the concept of procurement documents in Directive 2014/24/EU. On the merits, Article 136.2 does not allow free extensions. There must be additional information supplied late or a significant change to the documents, and the extension must be proportionate. The only possible cause was a question of 30 March seeking to relax a technical requirement, and there is no record of how it was answered or that the answer was made available to all; 'the extension cannot be separated from publication of the clarification that prompts it'. The decree and the acts directly and immediately resulting from it are annulled. What happens to the bid filed during the extension, the operative part does not say.

Saying the low bid is sufficiently justified is not giving reasons for accepting it

Collection and care of abandoned animals and feral cat colony control in Abanto Zierbena. The winning bidder, an animal welfare association, justified its low price by its associative nature, the absence of profit, premises with no rent and volunteer work, among other things. The technical report simply said it was sufficiently justified. The Basque review body accepts that accepting an abnormally low tender does not call for the exhaustive reasons needed for an exclusion, but there is a minimum, and 'the mere statement that the information provided is considered sufficient does not meet that requirement'. The award is annulled and the procedure goes back for the justification to be assessed and reasons given; nobody is excluded. The other two grounds fail: the low-bid queries and cure requests are procedural steps that need not be notified one by one if the minutes are published, and the licensed animal transport vehicle is required of the contractor during performance, not of the bidder.

A phone call is not a request to correct documents

Layout and printing of the publications of the Institución Fernando el Católico, EUR 3,368,766 in fourteen lots. The bidder proposed for lot 6 answered the article 150.2 LCSP request on time, but its evidence of technical capacity was incomplete: certificates of satisfactory performance were missing. The technical secretary told it so by telephone on 28 August, with no notice on the e-procurement site, and on 8 September the board excluded it for failing to prove its capacity. That same afternoon the company filed the certificate from the ministry it had worked for. The contracting authority conceded and the Tribunal accepts the concession. An incomplete reply to the request is not a withdrawal of the bid, which requires clearly non-compliant conduct. The tender documents themselves gave the proposed bidder three days to correct from receipt of the request, and a phone call can in no case replace formal notification. Partly upheld: the exclusion is annulled and the case goes back for a proper request. The Tribunal does not treat the capacity as proven and does not look at the certificates filed with the appeal, because assessing them is the board's job (art. 91.3.a of Aragon's Law 11/2023). It also refuses the cross requests for access to documents made by the appellant and the second-ranked bidder, and criticises the authority for sending a disorganised file that included documents from other lots.

A sworn statement the tender documents did not ask for cannot contradict the bid or justify excluding it

Supply of enoxaparin to the Asepeyo hospitals in Coslada and Sant Cugat (lot 4, EUR 231,621). In Annex V, where the formula-based criteria are entered, the appellant ticked the box for 24-hour delivery of ordinary orders, worth 4 points. In the technical envelope, however, it volunteered a sworn statement undertaking to deliver within three working days, which is exactly the minimum set by the technical specifications. The evaluation board saw an irreconcilable internal contradiction and excluded the bid without asking for clarification, arguing that clarifying would let the bidder choose its offer after the event. It did the same to two other laboratories in other lots. The Tribunal disagrees. The documents did not require that statement (the winning bidder filed none), improvements only count if they appear in Annex V, and contradicting a document nobody asked for is not among the exclusion grounds in the specifications. The statement merely acknowledges the minimum obligations that bind every bidder and must be disregarded: the offer is the one in Annex V, which was correctly completed. There was therefore no need even to seek clarification, and the exclusion was wholly unjustified. Appeal upheld in full: the exclusion and the award of the lot are annulled and the bid must be admitted and scored (art. 139.1 LCSP). Any other bidder excluded on the same ground can use the same argument.

Requiring 'full' integration with the contracting authority's robot, as an exclusion ground, favours whoever already provides the service

Postal services for Mutualia, a Social Security mutual insurer, estimated value EUR 872,305. An association of private postal operators challenged the tender documents on four grounds and won one. The rest fail. The staffing criterion does not score headcount but Basque-language skills and an experienced coordinator. Shorter delivery times for ordinary letters can be checked despite the lack of item-level tracking, through sampling, performance reviews and penalties (arts. 190 and 192 LCSP). And scoring the number of offices per province is a choice open to the authority, not an illegality: proposing a better criterion is not enough to annul the one chosen. The ground that succeeds concerns the technology platform. The administrative clauses scored it with 9 judgement-based points, but the technical specifications made direct API integration with the corporate robot, 'without requiring any further development or adaptation by Mutualia', a ground for exclusion. The annex published the web services and their fields, not how the system actually behaves, and there was no test environment or approval period. Only the operator already running the integration in production can guarantee 'full' compatibility, which gives the incumbent an unlawful competitive advantage even though the documents do not name it (arts. 1 and 132 LCSP). The criterion and clause 6.2 of the specifications are annulled and must be rewritten in functional, neutral terms, and with them the acts approving the tender file (art. 57.2).

If the notice of notification never arrived because of the authority's own mail server, there is no withdrawn bid and no penalty

Technical inspection of tunnels and culverts across the AENA airport network, estimated value EUR 924,000, challenged through the utilities-sector complaint (Royal Decree-law 3/2020). The bidder proposed for award was sent the pre-award document request on AENA's tendering platform on 14 January, but the e-mail notice never reached it. AENA later granted an extra deadline of 15:00 on 2 February and the company met it at 10:34 that day. Even so, in May its bid was treated as withdrawn for filing the selection documents late, its provisional guarantee was forfeited and the contract went to the other bidder. In its report AENA admitted that a fault in its mail server between 12:24 and 15:13 that day prevented the notice from being received. The Tribunal relies on the fifteenth additional provision of the LCSP, to which article 61 of Royal Decree-law 3/2020 refers: when notification is by electronic appearance, the notice is what starts the clock. Without a valid notice the request remains valid but has no effect, so the company breached nothing, and without a withdrawal attributable to the bidder there can be no forfeiture. Complaint upheld in full: the withdrawal, the forfeiture and the award are annulled and the request must be served again with a fresh deadline. Where the authority admits the technical fault, as here, the case wins itself; where it does not, ask the platform for its delivery log.

Holding shares does not make a convicted partner a de facto director: the exclusion ground requires proof that they still run the company

Maintenance of Cantabria's regional road network, a mixed contract worth EUR 79.8 million in four lots. After a final judgment of the Provincial Court convicted the former directors of two companies bidding as a joint venture of bribery and procurement fraud, the evaluation board excluded them under the debarment ground in article 71.1.a) LCSP. The convicted men had stepped down but kept 49.96% and 75% of the capital, and in one company the new director was the convicted man's daughter. The board treated them as de facto directors on the strength of the effective-control presumptions in article 305 of the General Social Security Act. The Tribunal does not accept this. Those presumptions apply 'for the purposes of this Act', serve to classify people in the self-employed scheme and do not define a de facto director. For that one must look to article 236.3 of the Companies Act and Supreme Court judgments 421/2015 and 224/2016, which require real, continuous and autonomous management, or formal directors acting on the person's instructions. A shareholding is an indication, but no act after the resignation was identified. Partly upheld, because the Tribunal does not declare that no debarment applies, and it stresses that it is not ruling out de facto management. As the formula-based envelopes had already been opened, the whole award procedure is annulled. The joined appeal against the technical report is dismissed as inadmissible, since that report cannot be challenged.

Paper bid after a PLACSP failure: it wins because the board never decided, and loses on everything else

Outpatient neurorehabilitation for acquired brain injury for the Valencian Health Department, EUR 109.9 million in eight lots. On the last day for bids the appellant could not sign or submit its tender through the state procurement platform: Java errors and the message 'No certificates in the system'. Two days later it lodged the bid on paper at the registry, with an expert report blaming a defect in the component distributed by the platform. The deputy director-general for procurement replied in writing that only electronic submission was allowed and that the company could collect its documents. The Tribunal treats that letter as a de facto rejection of the bid, open to challenge under article 44.2.b) LCSP, and annuls it because admitting or rejecting bidders is for the evaluation board (art. 326.2) and no board decision exists. This is hierarchical lack of competence, which makes the act voidable and capable of being validated (art. 52.3 of the Administrative Procedure Act). On the merits, though, everything goes against the appellant. The risk of electronic means lies with the bidder, platform support recorded that it was contacted after the deadline, the other bidders managed to submit, and no electronic fingerprint was generated to open the 24-hour window of the sixteenth additional provision. Partly upheld, with the case sent back so that the competent body decides in strict compliance with equal treatment. It is a formal win: if the platform fails, call support before the deadline expires.

Fixing the revoked signature on an ESPD filed in response to a correction request is not a 'second correction'

Supply of pre-insulated pipes for the district heating network of Benarrabá, tendered by TRAGSA, estimated value EUR 243,341, formula-based criteria only. The appellant relied on another company for its selection criteria and the board asked for that company's ESPD. It was filed, but signed by only one of its two representatives and with a revoked certificate, and the board excluded the bid outright as a defect that could not be corrected. The Tribunal first rejects TRAGSA's plea of inadmissibility: although the published notice was labelled a communication, it contained a final exclusion, which is for the board to decide (art. 326.2.a) and can be challenged. On the merits it restates its doctrine that an invalid electronic signature is a formal defect that can be corrected, even on the bid itself (Dec. 118/2023), and all the more so on administrative documents. It distinguishes the case of a bidder asked to fix a signature defect who files again without a valid signature (Dec. 1070/2020). Here the first request concerned the missing document, and the signature is a different defect that appeared in the document filed to comply with it. Fixing it does not prove the selection criteria afresh; it only regularises the form (Dec. 1158/2025). Partly upheld: the Tribunal will not treat the correction as made, but sends the case back for a request limited to the signature. The fact that the envelopes had been opened is no obstacle, as there were no judgement-based criteria.

DN 800 pipeline above 7.5 atmospheres: the required classification is E-6, not E-1

Renewal of the Pinzales valve chamber and replacement of branch 1 from Pinzales to Mareo, works tendered by the Asturias Water Consortium, estimated value EUR 6,375,957. The documents required contractor classification in group E, subgroup 1 (water supply and sewerage), category 6. A construction employers' organisation appealed, its standing recognised of the Tribunal's own motion under the last sentence of article 48 LCSP. It argued that a 2,967-metre DN 800 pipeline falls within subgroup E-6, 'large-diameter pressure pipelines'. The Consortium's own technical service agreed. Its justification report dated from December 2025, before TACRC Decision 466/2026 set the boundary between E-1 and E-6 at 600 mm diameter and 7.5 atmospheres operating pressure. This pipe has an 800 mm internal diameter and runs above 7.5 atmospheres. The authority conceded and the Tribunal accepts the concession: it does not breach the law and fits articles 79.5 LCSP and 36 of the General Regulation, which call for a single subgroup, that of the most characteristic work. Upheld in full. When challenging tender documents for hydraulic works, the two thresholds in Decision 466/2026 are the practical benchmark.

Pamplona LED street lighting: brand references with an equivalence clause stand, the permanent-contracts criterion does not, and the tender falls with it

Four electrical distributors each challenged the procurement documents for Pamplona's conversion of street lighting to LED, a mixed supply and works contract in five lots by district. The review body issued four identical decisions on the same day (107, 109, 110 and 111/2026), all upheld in part. Dismissed: the claim that the technical specifications were tailored to certain brands. They accept equivalents, the choice is reasoned, and proving equivalence is for whoever relies on it. The complaints against a 25-point technical report with no sub-weighting and against the weight given to the works element of a mixed contract also fail. Upheld: the social criterion awarding 10 points for staffing the contract with at least 50% permanent employees. Neither the legal report nor the municipality's submissions explain how that improves performance of this particular contract, which is what Article 64 of Navarre's Foral Law 2/2018 requires. Two points worth keeping. The relief sought only asked for the technical specifications and the projects to be annulled, but the review body rules on the criterion because the ground stood on its own and consistency obliges it to, even though the claimant never put that request in its prayer for relief. And annulling an award criterion means the procedure cannot go on: the decision declares that it cannot validly continue (CJEU, EVN and Wienstrom, C-448/01). Navarre applies its own Foral Law, not the LCSP, through a special complaint.

Year-by-year selection criteria not reasoned in the needs report: annulled, and they cannot be justified afterwards

Pamplona tendered a job analysis and description study and required, as technical ability, similar services worth EUR 45,500 in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025, on top of team experience. The complaint was lodged the day after the notice. The review body does not accept everything: requiring both company and team experience is lawful, and the Foral Law leaves the contracting authority free to choose how to measure experience (cumulative amount, a minimum single contract, or annual minimums). What fails is the justification. The needs report under Article 138.3 of Foral Law 2/2018 merely restates the requirement without explaining why that annual continuity is needed, and the authority's submissions do not cure it: they are generic reasons that could be given for any contract. That reasoning cannot be supplied in the reply to the complaint. The selection clause is annulled and the procedure declared unable to continue. A caveat when citing it: the operative part annuls clause H as a whole, although the legal grounds accept the part on the assigned team; what is struck down is the three-year annual threshold. Navarre applies its own Foral Law, not the LCSP.

Consortium bids: one member fully meeting each selection requirement is enough, unless the procurement documents say otherwise

Security for a reception centre run by the State Secretariat for Migration, EUR 1.6 million estimated value. The tender was a joint venture commitment split 99% and 1%, and at the Article 150.2 stage it was excluded because the minority partner did not prove economic or technical ability. TACRC annuls the exclusion. The ability of a joint venture commitment is assessed under Article 24.1 of the General Regulation (RGLCAP), not Article 69.6 LCSP, which deals only with classification. Re-reading Supreme Court judgment 886/2021, the general rule is aggregation: the joint venture complies when one of its members fully meets a given requirement, with no individual minimum for the others unless the documents expressly and reasonedly require it. Relying on a third party that is not itself a tenderer is different: there a minimum of its own may be required. Here the majority partner met the requirements on its own, and if the authority wanted a minimum per member it had to put it in the documents, not introduce it when checking the Article 150.2 paperwork. When citing it, note that the operative part simply upholds the appeal; the annulment and rollback are in the legal grounds, and the review body does not examine the authority's other objections (private security licence, ENS certification).

A tender signed by two companies that say they are not a joint venture: nobody knows who is bidding, and it must be excluded

Works concession to build and run a sports centre in Rivas-Vaciamadrid for 40 years, just over EUR 10 million estimated value. The winning tender was signed by two companies that both undertook to perform the contract while declaring they were not bidding as a joint venture. The municipality argued that the bidder was the company that uploaded the tender to the platform. The review body disagrees: who the tenderer is depends not on which entity files through the electronic platform but on what the tender documents say. With two signatories and no joint venture, the bidder's identity is uncertain, the defect cannot be remedied (Article 84 RGLCAP), and the tender must be excluded. The other grounds (an investment figure identical to the feasibility study, prior involvement) are not examined. First, access to the confidential justification is refused: Article 52 is instrumental and the appellant could defend itself without it. The operative part simply upholds the appeal; the exclusion is in the legal grounds.

Judgement-based criteria disguised as automatic: score bands do not turn them into a formula

Security staffing and maintenance of the security systems at the Library of Andalusia and the Music Documentation Centre in Granada, EUR 482,919.50. The administrative clauses placed a "study of the building's security conditions" (24 points) and a "work organisation plan" (10 points) among the automatic criteria, scored on scales such as "detailed / not very detailed" or "adequate / inadequate" and in point bands with no internal rules. For the review body, what makes a criterion automatic is how it is scored, not its label or where it sits in the documents: if placing a tender in a category requires technical judgement first, the consequence of the evaluation may be automated but the evaluation itself is not. Favourable legal reports, sign-off by the internal auditor and earlier unchallenged use of the same clause do not save it. Because reclassification affects 34 of 100 points, the split between envelopes and the body that evaluates (Article 146.2.a), a clarification is not enough: the documents are annulled and a new tender period opened. On the same day Decision 655/2026, brought by another tenderer, reaches the same result and adds two useful dismissals: ISO standards can be award criteria if linked to the subject matter, and attacking a price formula requires a simulation showing its effect.

"Immediate" call-outs with no cost in the budget and an improvement that pays for mandatory services: annulled

Maintenance of the regional government's offices in Granada, EUR 453,282.18. This is the second tender: the same review body had annulled the earlier documents. The current contractor appeals without having bid. Relabelling "24x7" as "outside working hours" does not remove the obligation, and "immediate" response remains undefined, as the authority admits. Keeping the technical director and maintenance manager permanently on call comes close to what European case law treats as working time and is not costed in the financial report (Article 100). On top of that, emergency call-outs were charged to a bank of hours set up as an improvement, and an improvement cannot be used to fund or condition a service that is part of the mandatory minimum content of the contract (Article 145.7). "It cannot be budgeted" is no answer: it must be estimated on reasonable assumptions. The affected sections of the technical specifications and the bank-of-hours criterion are annulled, and being the outgoing contractor is no sign of bad faith. A caveat: on three of those sections the review body rules on the appellant's description, as it admits it does not have their full text.

ENS, ISO standards and installer registration placed in the technical specifications and not in the administrative clauses: the documents are annulled

Data and VoIP communications for the municipality of Ciempozuelos, EUR 150,000 estimated value. Six grounds against the procurement documents and two succeed. First: the technical specifications required the National Security Framework (ENS) at high level, four ISO certifications, registration as an installer and manufacturer accreditations, none of which appeared in the notice or the administrative clauses. ENS is a business authorisation; ISO standards are selection or award criteria, not technical specifications under Article 128. Adding authorisation and ability requirements in the technical specifications beyond those in the administrative clauses is unlawful, all the more so without the justification Article 116.4 requires. Second: the selection criteria were not justified in the file, and the classification category must be calculated on the average annual value (Article 38 RGLCAP). The rest fail: a purely proportional price formula is valid, the penalties were challenged too early, the improvements were properly defined, and it was not shown that the technical envelope revealed the price. Although upheld only in part, the decision annuls the whole set of documents. A detail: the review body strikes down the selection criteria for lack of justification while finding the required turnover and contract value reasonable.

The authority's report on the appeal cannot add exclusion grounds the committee never gave

Framework agreement for dental equipment for Madrid Health Service primary care, EUR 962,724, lots 3 and 4. The committee excluded a tenderer for failing technical specifications that its data sheets reproduced word for word (beam centring, self-diagnosis, dead-man trigger). The review body treats this as a manifest error, open to review despite technical discretion: exclusion requires a clear, express and unequivocal breach. And when the authority raised a new ground in its report on the appeal (the size of the sensor), the review body rejects it: that report cannot complete the reasoning after the event by adding new failures. Lot 4, readmission; lot 3, rollback to check the sensor using only the tender documents. On the same day Decision 492/2026 applies the same rule to another tenderer under the same framework agreement, but confirms its exclusion from lot 4: naming the model is not enough if the tender lacks the technical documents, and explaining it in the appeal is late proof, not clarification. Read together there is some friction: 492 relies for equal treatment on a lot 4 exclusion that 483 has just annulled.

Price in the wrong envelope when there are no judgement-based criteria: no automatic exclusion

Dismantling and clearing of facilities on an estate in Las Rozas, tendered by a Madrid regional public company, around EUR 400,000 estimated value. The tenderer put a zip file with its price offer and the formula-criteria form into the administrative envelope and was excluded. The review body annuls the exclusion. Exclusion for revealing the content of another envelope is not automatic and is governed by proportionality: what is protected is the objectivity of the evaluation. Since this contract had no criterion requiring judgement, prior knowledge of the automatically scored criteria made no difference. It relies on the National High Court judgment of 6 November 2012 and the Supreme Court judgment of 4 May 2022. The operative part simply upholds the appeal; the rollback to evaluate the tender is in the legal grounds.

Abnormally low tender poorly justified, but after a vague request: no exclusion, a new request instead

Supply of a financial management application for the municipality of Muro de Alcoy (Alicante), EUR 174,000 estimated value; TACRC hears it under its agreement with the Valencian Community. The runner-up challenges the award to a tender presumed abnormally low. The review body accepts that the justification was insufficient: the winner listed cost-saving factors without putting figures on them. But the committee's request had been qualitative, asking for no staff profiles, hours or costs, and that shortfall stems largely from the vagueness of the committee's own request, which cannot be held against the tenderer. Outcome: the award is annulled and the procedure goes back for a specific new request, not for exclusion. In practice the appeal is won but the winner gets a second chance. Everything else is dismissed: non-compliance with the technical specifications must be express and clear, and old website captures or an interpretive argument do not prove it; and for technical ability the three years run date to date up to the tender deadline, leaving out certificates lacking the endorsement of the receiving body (Article 90.1.a).

A public company that calls itself a non-contracting authority in its procurement documents is still subject to review

Consultancy for the transition of the hotels owned by the company that runs the Sierra Nevada ski resort, EUR 175,000. The administrative clauses declared the company not to be a contracting authority and it denied the review body's jurisdiction. The review body asserts it: contracting authority status is objective and not at the entity's disposal, and self-classification in the documents cannot override the law or bind the review body. Applying CJEU case law on public control and financing, it relies on Article 3.3.d) LCSP (the regional government holds 96.31% of the capital and has made capital contributions and named transfers) and expressly departs from its own Decisions 83/2020 and 237/2021. On the merits, the appellant's exclusion had been communicated in a single phrase, "does not prove technical or professional ability", without separate notification. That breaches Article 151.2 LCSP and Article 35.1 of Law 39/2015, and the reasons must be in the file itself and cannot be rebuilt afterwards. The award is annulled and the procedure goes back so that the authority decides, with reasons, whether the documents filed to remedy the gap were sufficient. A caveat: the review body itself acknowledges that the company earns EUR 45-46 million a year on the market and still concludes that its financing is mainly public.

Automatic-envelope information in the technical report: if the documents invited the mistake and it carries little weight, no exclusion

Litigation and legal advice for the municipality of Segovia, EUR 250,681.60. The committee excluded a law firm for disclosing, in the judgement-based report, data on two automatic criteria: training sessions (2 points) and turnaround time for legal opinions (5 points). The review body recalls that mixing envelopes is not in itself grounds for exclusion and must be weighed: what matters is not secrecy as such but its purpose, objective evaluation and equal treatment. It looks at whether the information was unknown or decisive, how much the criterion weighs and whether the documents led to the error. The training described in the report did not match the one in the automatic envelope and gave no hours. On turnaround time, the documents themselves asked for a description of how opinions would be issued in a report worth 20 of 30 points, and the criterion was worth at most 5 of 100. Exclusion is disproportionate and the procedure goes back to evaluate the tender. Partial because the whole procedure is not annulled: if the evaluation turns out tainted, the award can be challenged.

A tender filed on time that the committee never opened: it is no answer to say afterwards it would have been excluded anyway

Unarmed private security for events organised by the municipality of Valle Gran Rey, lot 3 of an open simplified procedure with an estimated value of EUR 120,296.63. With the tender period already running, the municipality changed the weighting of the criteria (from 70 points for price and 30 for improvements to 45 and 55) to comply with Article 145.4 LCSP, re-approved the procurement documents and allowed fifteen more days. The appellant filed its tender on the last day, at 13:54. At the opening session its envelope is nowhere: neither admitted nor excluded. The lot is awarded on 29 July and the contract signed the next day. The committee secretary certified that the tender was invisible and inaccessible on the e-procurement platform; the platform itself told the review body there had been no incident that day and that the envelope was still sealed. The municipality also argued that a rollback would be pointless, because the form the company attached to its appeal was unsigned, used the old template and left the subcontracting table blank. The review body disagrees: the platform receipt lists the amended form, electronically signed, in the envelope, and it is not for the review body to build a ground for exclusion after the event on a document other than the one actually filed, when the committee never examined the real one. Failing to open the tender is treated as a de facto exclusion, a qualifying procedural act under Article 44.2.b). The operative part upholds the joined appeals in part, with the effects set out in the seventh legal ground: the award of lot 3 and everything flowing from it, the contract included, is annulled, and the procedure goes back to before the opening so that the committee opens the envelope and decides expressly. It is partial because the tender is not ordered to be admitted. Two further points. Signing the contract the day after the award breaches the standstill period in Article 153.3, but is not a nullity ground under Article 39.2.d), since the company was able to appeal; the contract falls as a consequence of the annulled award (Article 38.b). And access to the file was requested only from the review body, in the appeal itself: without a prior request to the contracting authority there is no Article 52.3 step to supplement the appeal.

Failing to file the undertaking from the entity lending its capacities is not the same as filing an incomplete one

Security services for a building within the Hospital Juan Carlos I site in Gran Canaria, estimated value EUR 541,523.04, five tenderers. The appellant relied on the capacities of another company. After a first general request to remedy, the committee asked it for that company's ESPD and its written undertaking to make the resources available for the whole contract, and then excluded it for not having filed the undertaking. The company replied that it had. Faced with the appeal, the committee went back over its minutes and the contracting authority conceded: the document had been filed, though the committee regarded it as incomplete, and the decision did not say what was missing. The review body accepts the concession and states that the absence of a document and the inadequacy of its content are different situations. It adds that the written undertaking in Article 75.2 is, as a rule, required from the tenderer with the best offer (Article 140.1.c), unless brought forward under Article 140.3, and that a bare reference to Article 75 LCSP is not enough to treat the request as unmet. The operative part upholds the appeal in part, annulling the exclusion and sending the procedure back to just before it was adopted, so that the committee assesses the appellant's documents again and takes the decision that is appropriate. What it does not grant is direct admission, and it sets limits on the fresh assessment: there is no right to remedy the same clearly identified defect over and over, nor to acquire the required capacities after the tender deadline (Article 140.4). Anyone challenging an exclusion over reliance on third-party capacities should start by reading the minutes with the document in hand.

Bidding EUR 0.00 per kilometre where the documents set a EUR 0.01 floor did not justify exclusion: the documents did not provide for it

Leasing without purchase option of ten vehicles for the Catalan government's infrastructure company, estimated value EUR 659,603.10, seven tenderers. The financial offer had three sub-criteria: total price, up to 50 points, and the price per kilometre for unused and excess mileage, up to 2.50 each. The annex to the administrative specifications set a minimum of EUR 0.01 per kilometre for those two and said that, if no figure was entered, the minimum would be deemed offered. The appellant entered 0.00 for excess mileage and the committee excluded it on opening the formula-based envelope. The review body accepts that the tender breaches the floor and that the documents were clear on that point, but notes that they attached no exclusionary consequence to bidding below it, unlike what they expressly did for tenders exceeding the budget. It also weighs that the sub-criterion was worth 2.50 points out of 100, that most tenderers bid 0.01, and that there is no sign that less drastic options were considered: exclusion is the last resort and here it is disproportionate (recital 101 of Directive 2014/24/EU). The proportionate course, it says, is not to score that sub-criterion. The operative part is brief, upholding the appeal against the exclusion; the sixth legal ground specifies the rollback so that the tender is admitted and assessed. The alternative claim, that 0.00 be read as 0.01, is not the course it takes: the review body prefers to leave the sub-criterion unscored. It settles one more useful point along the way: the wording of the criterion gave top marks to the highest price and the formula to the lowest, and the reading that fits the purpose of the criterion, saving money, prevails.

Revising value-judgement scores after the formula-based envelope has been opened brings down the whole procedure

Security and guarding services for the facilities of Palma’s municipal water company, an above-threshold contract with an estimated value of EUR 6.38 million and three tenders. The evaluation board published its scores on the value-judgement criteria and, in the minutes, gave tenderers three calendar days to complain of arithmetical errors or documents that had been submitted but not assessed. Without waiting for that period to end, it opened the envelope with the formula-based criteria and ranked the tenders: 92.90 points for the first, 91 for the second. The second complained, the technical staff admitted they had not read seven pages of its technical proposal, and the board added a point under criterion 2, with the financial offers already known; the ranking did not change. That second-ranked tenderer then challenged the award. The review body distinguishes what happened from the correction of errors under Article 109.2 of Law 39/2015: assessing documents the first report overlooked involves a value judgement, so it is not correcting a clerical error but revising the act, and it was done after the formula-based envelope had been opened, contrary to Article 146.2 LCSP. It also weighs that several of the so-called automatic criteria, those on the incident-management software, left room for appraisal, so the board was deciding the complaint on the value-judgement scores and those points at the same time, with under two points between the top two. Its conclusion is that the impartiality and objectivity required in evaluating tenders were not guaranteed and, since no fresh evaluation could now be free of that defect, it annuls the award and the entire procedure. It does not rule on the grounds about the scoring itself or on the rounding of the time-limit criterion, which the authority had conceded. Two points for tenderers. Any change to value-judgement scores made once the formula envelope is open can be challenged, even if it favours the challenger and leaves the ranking intact. And it pays to check which supposedly automatic criteria leave the evaluator some discretion: here they are what turned a one-point correction into the annulment of the whole procedure.

Where the experience criterion scores «works on buildings» without qualification, the evaluation report cannot discard experience in refurbishment

Design and site supervision for a day centre for people with intellectual disabilities in Santa Pola, lot 1, with a base budget of EUR 116,434.10. The procurement documents gave up to 30 points for the architect’s experience: one point per EUR 100,000 of construction cost on care buildings and one per EUR 200,000 on other public buildings. When scoring, the municipal architect added a «note on technical interpretation criteria»: new build or extensions only; no refurbishment, rehabilitation or fit-out. The third-ranked tenderer, on 85 points, received 15 where it claimed 30, enough to put it first. The review body goes by the scoring rule, which refers to «works on buildings» with no qualifier, rather than by the sub-criterion’s heading, which says «construction»; and even taking that word into account, neither Article 13.2 LCSP, nor the classification of works in Article 232.1(a) (cited in the decision as «132.1.a)», a slip), nor Article 2.2 of the Building Act limits it to new build. Any doubt is resolved against the drafter of the documents under Article 1288 of the Civil Code. The fact that the job is a new building does not rescue the note either: if the authority wanted new-build experience only, it had to say so in the clause, not infer it afterwards from the purpose of the contract by reading something into the documents that is not there. What is being procured is design and site supervision, which the Building Act and the Technical Building Code govern both for new build and for work on existing buildings. The award is annulled for breach of Articles 122, 145.2 and 146.1 LCSP and the procedure goes back so that the criterion is scored again on its literal wording; the review body does not do the scoring itself, although the applicant asked it to in the alternative. Evaluation reports that come with their own «interpretation criteria» deserve a careful read: if they narrow what the clause does not, they amend the criterion after the tenders are known, and that is what should be challenged.

Where the procurement documents allow the team to change when commitment of resources is evidenced, the tender cannot be treated as withdrawn by comparing it with the anonymised CVs in envelope 3

Software development for the Ministry of Health, estimated value EUR 11.43 million; lot 2, two tenders. The contract summary and annex D of the technical specifications required the provisionally selected tenderer to name its team, map it to the anonymised CVs in the tender and supply CVs for any new team members if someone changed. The top-ranked tenderer, on 94.80 points against 62.75, put forward a different project manager and consultant from those in envelope 3 when it submitted the Article 150.2 LCSP documents. The authority then asked for the envelope 3 CVs without anonymisation; the tenderer sent them, stating that it was not altering its tender and kept profiles of equal or higher standing. Seeing those papers, the procurement board found that the envelope 3 project manager was already assigned to another contract and ordered a replacement within three calendar days. The company named the person it had designated as project manager from the outset, and the board excluded it (strictly, treated its tender as withdrawn) because that person was the consultant in envelope 3 and the consultant role was left unfilled. The authority conceded the claim: it had asked about the original team, not the one being committed. The review body accepts the concession since it sees no manifest breach of the law, holds that the team was always the one submitted at the Article 150.2 stage, as Article 76.2 and the documents allowed, and that the discrepancy stemmed from the authority’s own error; it annuls the withdrawal decision and sends the procedure back so the tender is reinstated. One procedural point is worth not repeating. The company’s first filing was headed as a request to correct errors, and the authority reclassified it as a special appeal (Article 115.2 of Law 39/2015); the appeal it lodged later as such was treated as supplementary submissions and rejected as out of time. The time limit against the withdrawal is that of Article 50.1 LCSP, and the safe course is to appeal within it rather than rely on someone reclassifying a filing. And when replying under Article 150.2, if the documents allow the team to change, state in every submission who fills each role.

A 3 % penalty imposed in a separate decision after the exclusion has been upheld can still be challenged if it was applied without reasons

Supply and installation of floodlights at the ferry terminal of the Ceuta Port Authority, estimated value EUR 227,503.08. The provisionally selected tenderer failed to prove its financial standing and did not lodge the definitive guarantee properly and on time at the Article 150.2 LCSP stage; its tender was treated as withdrawn and the TACRC upheld that in Decision 794/2026. With the contract already awarded and signed, the Port Authority’s President imposed, in a separate decision, the penalty of 3 % of the base budget, EUR 6,825.09, giving no reasons beyond citing the provision. The company challenges only the penalty. The first question was admissibility: under Plenary Decision 1474/2022 the penalty can be challenged where it forms part of the withdrawal decision or where lack of due process or irreparable harm is invoked (Article 44.2(b) LCSP). The first did not apply and EUR 6,825.09 is not irreparable harm, but the review body finds a lack of due process in the automatic application itself: without reasons there is no way to check whether the penalty is justified. It also rejects the argument that Decision 794/2026 could only be taken to the courts, since a different act is now being challenged. On the merits it repeats its case law: the penalty is automatic only for voluntary, unjustified withdrawal, forged documents or a request left unanswered; where compliance is partial or late the circumstances must be assessed, and this company’s conduct came nowhere near self-exclusion, falsification or total non-compliance. It adds that Article 153.4, which the authority was really relying on, targets a successful tenderer who has proved its eligibility and then fails to sign, not one who never proves it. The operative part upholds the appeal «in part» without saying which part fails or expressly annulling the penalty, and the decision does not say whether the authority may impose it again with reasons. The takeaway for an excluded tenderer: losing the appeal against the exclusion does not stop you contesting a penalty that arrives later without reasons.

Failing to evidence a scored enhancement costs its points, not exclusion as abnormally low, and minimum resources are checked under Article 150.2, not Article 149

Maintenance of green spaces and street trees in Lucena, lot 2 (planters in the town centre, base budget EUR 398,928.28), with formula-based criteria only: price, 70 points, and two enhancements worth 15 each, one being the purchase of a 1,000-litre tank with an electric pump and batteries, which the procurement documents costed at EUR 12,000. The applicant, a sheltered employment centre, offered the lowest price and, in justifying it, allocated exactly that EUR 12,000 to the enhancement. It was asked by phone and email for the tank’s measurements, an on-site check took place on 1 July and the technical report found the tank lacked batteries and pumping equipment and that the vehicle offered, with no open load bed and a rear opening narrower than the tank, was unsuitable. The evaluation board decided to exclude the tender as abnormally low and the council awarded the lot to another tenderer for having «obtained the highest score», with no express exclusion decision. A first appeal against the board’s proposal had been ruled inadmissible (Decision 499/2026); this one targets the award. The review body separates three things: the scored enhancement, the minimum resource in the technical specifications (a vehicle with a 1,000-litre watering tank) and economic viability under Article 149. Failure to evidence a scored enhancement can only cost the corresponding points, and minimum resources are checked at the Article 150.2 LCSP stage and cannot be brought forward into the Article 149 procedure. The report also demanded an open load bed and rear-opening dimensions that no document required, accepted the staff costs and small machinery, said nothing on overheads or profit and never explained why those objections made a EUR 263,529.49 tender unworkable; the site visit left no record, photographs or measurements. Award and exclusion are annulled for breach of Article 149.6 and Articles 145, 146 and 132 LCSP, and the board must re-score the tender, deducting at most the 15 enhancement points, rank it and, if appropriate, run Article 149 again with proper reasons. The applicant argued that it stays first even without those 15 points; the review body does not check that. A practical warning: access to the file under Article 52 was refused because it was requested in June, before the award existed, and not renewed afterwards. When appealing an award, ask for access in respect of that award.

A sheltered employment centre may justify a low tender with the aid its status carries, without grant decisions for years not yet called

Opening and closing of the municipal parks of Mairena del Aljarafe for 2026-2029, estimated value EUR 174,780. The first-ranked tenderer, a social-initiative sheltered employment centre, was presumed abnormally low and justified its price with the 100% rebate on employer social security contributions and the subsidy of 50% of the minimum wage for each post held by a person with a disability. The contract manager accepted the wage costs but reported against the tender because no individual grant decisions were produced for 2027, 2028 and 2029. The company challenged that report and the appeal was declared inadmissible (Decision 493/2026) as a mere preparatory act. The committee then never met again and the contract was awarded to the second-ranked tenderer with no express decision to exclude. The review body locates the exclusion, a tacit one, in the award decision, which is why it can be challenged, and finds two defects. One procedural: the committee never made the reasoned proposal required by Article 149.6, a substantial procedural breach. One of substance: a tender cannot be rejected for lacking documents that by their nature cannot exist yet. Following TACRC Decisions 884/2018 and 1013/2015 and its own Decision 462/2023, it is enough to show the aid scheme, the sheltered employment status and grants received in earlier years; any cut or withdrawal of the aid is business risk. The operative part upholds the appeal against the award, annulling it, with a rollback so that the committee reassesses the justification and makes a reasoned proposal. It does not declare the tender viable. The practical lesson for tenderers lies in the sequence: the adverse technical report is not what you challenge; what you challenge is the act that excludes you, even when it comes dressed as an award.

Experience in five towns of over 20,000 people and an improvement each tenderer defines for itself: Loja's home-care specifications fall

Home-care services for Loja (Granada), estimated value EUR 38,883,127.16. The procurement documents are challenged by the sector's trade association, which has standing under Article 48 LCSP and its statutory defence of its members' collective interests. Clause 10.2 of the administrative specifications required tenderers to have provided the service, in each of the last three years, in at least five municipalities of more than 20,000 inhabitants with at least 200 users in each. The municipality defended it in its report: around 950 users, some 320 staff and a main town with twenty-two scattered outlying settlements. The review body accepts that the size of the contract might justify stricter technical standing, but nothing in the file linked those circumstances to the specific thresholds, and experience can be shown through different territorial models; Articles 74 and 132 are breached. And a line that serves in many challenges to procurement documents: reasons given in the appeal proceedings cannot make up for the lack of reasons beforehand. The award criterion "Bathroom adaptations: up to 7 points" also falls (three adaptations, 3 points; four, 5; five or more, 7). The only specific item, replacing a bath with a shower tray, appeared in an annex to the technical specifications rather than the administrative ones, and section 2.2.4 of the technical specifications left open "other improvements the company may propose". Improvements must be defined in advance (Article 145.7), not left to whatever each tenderer offers, which would give the authority the unrestricted freedom Article 145.5.b) forbids. The operative part upholds the appeal and annuls the administrative specifications, with a fresh call for tenders where appropriate. No tenders had been filed when the procedure was suspended. The heading reads "Decision 634/2025"; that is a slip in the decision itself.

Unawarded school routes handed out by email after asking for quotes: void for total disregard of any procedure

Two school transport routes using vehicles of up to nine seats in a Navarrese valley, for the 2026-2027 school year, which received no tenders in two successive open procedures run by the regional education department. Between late July and August the department asked several operators for quotes by email and on 18 August assigned both routes to one of them, also by email, at an agreed price of EUR 250. The complaint was brought by the taxi driver who had run the routes for the previous two years, who had not tendered in either procedure and whose email asking to quote went unanswered. The contracting authority argued there was no challengeable act, the assignment being outside any procurement procedure. The review body disagrees: the assignment is the award of a service contract (Article 30.1 LFCP) and falls within Article 122.2 LFCP, and the complainant has standing as an interested undertaking. On the merits it upholds the complaint and declares the award void under Article 47.1.e) of Law 39/2015, to which Article 116.2.a) LFCP refers. With no tenders received, the negotiated procedure without prior publication under Article 75.1.a) was available, with invitations, award criteria and a time limit, and urgency could have been met through the emergency procedure in Article 140; neither was used. It adds a second ground of nullity, the failure to use the Navarre e-procurement platform (Articles 75.4 and 95.2, Decisions 89/2022 and 108/2020), and notes that tenders sent by email do not preserve the confidentiality required by Article 53.2. It relies on the Supreme Court judgment of 30 September 2015 (appeal 733/2013) and its own Decisions 16/2024 and 78/2026. The operative part merely declares nullity: it orders no fresh procedure, says nothing about a service running since September and gives the complainant no right to be invited. Navarre applies its own Foral Law 2/2018 rather than the LCSP, and the remedy is called a special complaint; the national equivalents are Articles 168.a).1, 120 and 39.1 and the fifteenth additional provision of the LCSP, and before transposing it one should check whether the contract reaches the thresholds in Article 44.1 LCSP.

The contracting authority admits before the review body that the successful tenderer’s samples did not meet the technical specifications: exclusion and contract for the runner-up

Supply of uniforms for the local police of a municipality in the Canary Islands, estimated value EUR 612,000, open procedure above the EU thresholds, no lots, two tenderers. The first-ranked tenderer had come through the Article 149 LCSP procedure for abnormally low tenders and was awarded the contract. The other tenderer asked to inspect the samples and the technical tender two days after the award and seeks review listing 156 departures from the technical specifications across eleven garments, relying on the TACRC case law on exclusion for an express and clear breach of the specifications. The contract manager states that fabric composition and laboratory tests are beyond his expertise and checks only what can be seen in the samples: missing zips, pockets, reflective bands, the lettering on the back, a hood. On that report the contracting authority admits it never verified that the samples complied and proposes that the review be upheld. The successful tenderer argues that section 10 of the specifications sets minimums, not exclusionary requirements, that equivalent solutions had to be accepted (Article 126.7 LCSP), that a sample cannot carry every customisation and that the specifications restrict competition. The review body answers none of this: it applies the case law on concession of the claim (Article 75 of the Law on Administrative Jurisdiction, through Decision 74/2022 of the Navarre review body) and, having compared specifications that describe each garment down to pictures, finds no manifest breach of the law. It upholds the review, annuls the award and takes the procedure back so that, with the successful tender excluded, it continues with the next-ranked tenderer, who is the applicant; the Article 53 LCSP suspension is lifted. The operative part matches the relief sought. Two caveats when relying on it. The exclusion rests on the concession and on visible manufacturing defects, not on any ruling on technical equivalence or on the proportionality of specifications that were never challenged; against a contracting authority that defends its award, the Article 126.7 argument remains open. And it was the physical inspection of the samples, requested as soon as the award was notified, that gave the review its substance.

If the evaluation board skips the three-lowest-tenders rule of Article 85.4 RGLCAP, the award falls even when the error comes from the Platform’s calculator

Cleaning of the premises of a State security force throughout Spain, an above-threshold contract with an estimated value of EUR 199.4 million divided into five lots; the award of lot 2, which drew four tenders, is challenged. The procurement documents referred to Article 85 RGLCAP for identifying abnormally low prices, and the evaluation board ranked the tenders without any finding on abnormally low tenders. The third-ranked tenderer seeks review: the first and second tenders should have been presumed abnormally low and put through the Article 149 LCSP procedure. The contracting authority concedes the claim and admits that the calculation tool of the Public Sector Procurement Platform misled it by omitting the closing rule in Article 85.4 RGLCAP: where fewer than three tenders remain, the new average is calculated on the three lowest tenders. The review body first dismisses the successful tenderer’s objection to standing; a third-ranked tenderer has standing when it challenges, with a real prospect of success, the ranking of those ahead of it, even if any improvement depends on a later inter partes procedure (Article 48 LCSP). On the merits it applies its case law on concession of the claim (Decisions 1704/2025 and 1439/2025, Article 119.3 of Law 39/2015 and Article 75 of the Law on Administrative Jurisdiction): a concession can only be refused if it manifestly breaches the law, and the manifest breach here is the board’s, since declaring the presumption of abnormality is a non-discretionary act. The review is upheld, the award annulled and the procedure taken back to the moment immediately before the award proposal, so that the two leading tenders are declared presumptively abnormally low and both are put through Article 149 LCSP; the suspension is lifted (Article 57.3 LCSP). The decision excludes nobody and says nothing on whether the tenders are viable: if both are justified, the applicant stays third. The useful point is where the error came from. With few tenderers the three-lowest-tenders rule is usually decisive, and on the authority’s own account the Platform’s calculator did not apply it; wherever the procurement documents refer to Article 85 RGLCAP, the calculation should be redone by hand before the time limit for challenging the award expires.

An experience criterion scored by formula still requires reasons, document by document, for each piece of evidence rejected

Technical assistance for managing an integrated action plan co-financed by the ERDF 2021-2027 for a municipality in the Valencia region, estimated value EUR 273,892.18, above the EU thresholds, eighteen tenderers. The fourth-ranked tenderer seeks review. Award criterion (c), scored by formula and worth 15 points, rewarded experience in ERDF assistance or assistance under “equivalent structural funds”, to be proven “by certification issued by the entities” that received it. Out of 27 documents the evaluation board counted 15: two were discarded as relating to tourism sustainability plans and ten as “reports” signed by officials of various public bodies. Full marks would have taken the applicant from 87.63 to 93.63 points, ahead of the successful tenderer, which gives it standing (Article 48 LCSP, Decision 922/2026, Supreme Court judgment 317/2024 of 27 February). The TACRC, which hears the case under an agreement with the regional government (Article 46.4 LCSP), rejects both extreme positions. Checking whether a document fits the rule does not turn the criterion into a qualitative one as long as the outcome is binary (Decisions 346/2026, 216/2022 and 344/2020), but the check is not mechanical either. “Certification” in the procurement documents is not the certificate of satisfactory performance in Articles 88.1, 89.1 and 90.1 LCSP; any document attesting the truth of the fact will do, and some of the “reports” were in substance certificates. Nor is there evidence that funds other than the ERDF and the Recovery Plan were considered. A generic reply to the request for clarification is not an adequate statement of reasons. The operative part upholds the review “on the terms” of the eighth legal ground: the award is annulled and the procedure taken back to the moment before the reasons for the score under criterion (c), so that the contracting authority justifies the applicant’s score. That is narrower than the relief sought, which was a re-scoring of up to 15 points: the review body orders no document to be counted, and the authority may reject them again if it gives individual reasons. The suspension also stays in place until another review against the same procedure is decided. What can be reused is the substantive notion of “certification” and the requirement of a list of accepted and rejected documents with the ground for each rejection.

Where the outgoing contractor is a sheltered employment centre, the procurement documents cannot state «transfer of staff: no» without publishing the staff data

Maintenance of outdoor public areas for a municipality in the province of Seville, an above-threshold services contract with an estimated value of EUR 1,464,954.53. An operator in the sector challenged the procurement documents before any tender had been submitted. The summary table of the administrative specifications stated «Transfer of staff: No» while acknowledging, in the same table, that the outgoing contractor is a sheltered employment centre; clause 27 added that the municipality did not certify that no transfer obligation existed and left tenderers to check the point «at their own risk». The outgoing contractor, when asked, merely replied that it rotates its workforce across services and assigns no one exclusively to the contract. The review body upholds the appeal. Article 130(2) LCSP requires the new contractor to take over the persons with disabilities who were in fact working on the contract; that is a factual test, not one of formal assignment, so the reply did not meet Article 130(1), which requires a list showing collective agreement, job category, type of contract, working hours, seniority, gross annual salary and agreements in force. Without that data it cannot be verified that the maximum rate of EUR 25.79 per hour and the tender budget comply with Articles 100 and 101 LCSP, and the incumbent keeps an information advantage contrary to Article 132. The fact that any transfer will ultimately be settled by the labour courts does not release the contracting authority from its duty to obtain and publish the information where a transfer appears likely, and here the documents themselves create that appearance by mentioning the sheltered employment centre. The ruling is narrower than the relief sought: the appeal targeted all the procurement documents, but only the clauses on transfer of staff are annulled, with the procedure taken back to before approval of the specifications so that the outgoing contractor is asked again, the data published and the contradiction removed. The review body does not find that a transfer obligation exists, nor that the price is insufficient. If the new documents publish the list and the budget still fails to cover those costs, the challenge must be to the budget, backed by figures; the information defect will have been cured.

Paying for a collection service solely through ownership of the waste requires an economic report and sufficient consideration

Separate collection of used textiles in four municipalities in the province of Cádiz and at recycling points, tendered by a public water and waste company owned by a provincial council and reserved entirely for work integration social enterprises and not-for-profit sheltered employment centres; estimated value EUR 266,005.13, two years plus three one-year extensions. The contractor was to be paid only in kind, through ownership of the deposited waste: the administrative specifications stated that the contract created no payment obligation whatsoever and, in the price clause itself, that textiles currently have «no outlet» and would yield no value for six months. The estimated value was obtained by multiplying EUR 250 per tonne by the annual volume, with no cost breakdown, while the technical specifications required 150 containers, RFID readers, cleaning around each container and resolution of incidents within 24 hours. One of the entities eligible under the reservation appealed without having tendered, and was granted standing because the documents prevented it from competing on equal terms. The review body upholds the appeal. The absence of a cost breakdown infringes Articles 100(2), 101(2) and 116(4)(d) LCSP, citing Decisions 231/2018, 217/2020 and 30/2024. There was also positive evidence of insufficiency, contrary to Article 102(3): the appellant's economic report, which the contracting authority did not rebut, put the cost at EUR 0.446 to 0.484 per kg against a theoretical income of 0.25 and an actual market income of 0.17, producing annual losses of EUR 46,445 to 55,303. Review of abnormally low tenders cannot replace the prior duty to set a viable economic basis, and the design defeats the purpose of the reservation under the fourth additional provision of the LCSP. The procurement documents, the contract notice and the rest of the documentation are annulled, and the procedure is taken back so that a full economic and financial report is drawn up and a definite, market-based consideration is set, whether in money, in kind properly valued, or mixed, with a fresh period for tenders. Payment in kind is not ruled out; what falls is the failure to justify that it is sufficient. To replicate the outcome, bring a cost report to the appeal, as here: it is what took the case from a formal omission to a finding that the consideration was insufficient.

Placing the unit price schedule in the administrative envelope does not justify exclusion where price is the sole award criterion

Supply of plumbing materials for a municipality in the province of Seville, in three lots, with an estimated value of EUR 711,877.32. The tender evaluation board excluded a tenderer from lot 1 for including in the administrative envelope the schedule of unit prices in Annex IV, which clause 7 of the administrative specifications placed in the financial offer envelope, relying on Article 139 LCSP. The tenderer argued that the annex had been duplicated and was also in envelope B. In its report the contracting authority accepted the irregularity but agreed to readmission, and the review body treats this as acquiescence in the claim, applying by analogy Article 75(2) of the Spanish Administrative Jurisdiction Act: it may depart from it only where accepting it would manifestly infringe the law. It does not. Price was the sole award criterion, there were no criteria requiring a value judgment that disclosure could influence, and no assessment took place between the opening of envelope A and envelope B; the exclusion decision identifies no material effect and does not explain why the irregularity made it impossible to continue. The review body relies on its Decision 545/2023, under which, in tenders assessed solely by formula, contamination is not presumed and whoever excludes must justify its effects; the contracting authority had also cited Decisions 682/2025, 241/2026, 252/2026 and 274/2026. The exclusion is annulled and the procedure taken back so that the board opens the appellant's envelope B. Two cautions for anyone relying on it. The outcome rests on acquiescence, which weakens its value as precedent even though the review body addresses the merits, and the reasoning does not carry over automatically to tenders with award criteria involving a value judgment. And the decision expressly leaves open whether the annex is actually in envelope B and whether it matches the copy in envelope A: if it is missing or different, the board may exclude again and that new decision will have to be challenged.

A start-up and a request to remedy that asks for exactly what the procurement documents rule out: the exclusion is annulled and the evaluation board must say which documents will do

Supply of foodstuffs to a catering school run by the Andalusian employment service, awarded under the simplified open procedure, estimated value EUR 116,261.45; the dispute concerns the pastry lot. The appellant was the tenderer ranked first, a company incorporated in June 2025, excluded for failing to comply with the pre-award request for documents under Article 150.2 LCSP, with the 3 % penalty looming. On technical ability, the request to remedy asked for a list of past supplies backed by certificates, the very means that section 4.B of Annex I to the procurement documents declared inapplicable to undertakings less than five years old under Article 89.1.h) LCSP; the evaluation board then excluded the tenderer for not providing the alternative means. On economic and financial standing it asked for turnover or net assets «or other means of proof» without saying which, when the first annual accounts could not yet have been approved and the documents provided for no substitute. The review body upholds the appeal. It reads the third subparagraph of Article 86.1 LCSP as mandatory («shall be allowed») and holds that, where the procurement documents are silent, the board itself must specify in the request which documents it considers appropriate, rather than leaving the tenderer to guess and then sit a sufficiency test; relying on its Decision 173/2020 and Article 60.3 of Directive 2014/24/EU, it adds that the means of proof is relaxed, not the minimum level, here EUR 18,448.66. On professional authorisation, the tenderer filed its registration in the regional register of tenderers instead of the food-safety registration; the review body accepts that identifying the right register was its job, but on proportionality grounds folds it into the new request, provided the registration existed when the time limit for tenders expired (Article 140.4 LCSP). The exclusion is annulled and the procedure goes back to the point before the request, not to the review of what had already been filed, as the appellant sought. For reuse: the Article 86.1 point works for any young undertaking; the operative part says nothing about the penalty, which merely loses its basis with the exclusion; access to the file was refused because it had not first been sought from the contracting authority (Article 52 LCSP, Decision 51/2025), and the review body declines to assess the documents itself even though the contracting authority invited it to.

A technical annex left blank in a healthcare framework agreement: the documents required it for scoring, not for admission, and the board must score what is clearly stated in the technical report

Framework agreement for outsourced diagnostic tests for patients of the Andalusian health service in the province of Málaga, tendered by one of its hospitals in 34 lots with an estimated value of EUR 131,814,972.76. A private healthcare provider bidding for three groups of lots was eliminated for failing to reach the 40-point minimum on the qualitative award criteria after scoring zero on the sub-criterion for staff and sessions offered: it had not filed Annex VI bis, where sessions, patients per session and weekly patients were to be stated, and the technical committee said it could not compute the productivity ratio, although the operational report declared 180 scans a week for one group and allowed the figure to be derived for the other two. The review body upholds the appeal. Reading clause 12.3 of the administrative specifications and clause 4.2 of the technical specifications, it finds that the annex was an «essential requirement for scoring», not for admission, and that no clause attached exclusion to its absence; citing the Supreme Court judgment of 3 December 2019 (ECLI:ES:TS:2019:4026) and Pippo Pizzo (C-27/15), it holds that the contracting authority may not apply a consequence the procurement documents do not provide for (Article 139 LCSP), and allows information outside the annex to be scored only where it is clear, unequivocal and directly usable without reconstruction (Article 141.2 LCSP). The award is annulled for the three groups and the procedure goes back to the technical evaluation. Read it carefully before relying on it. The review body does not check whether the report actually contained the data, which was the point in dispute, and leaves that to the board. The operative part, a full upholding, refers to the seventh legal ground, which orders that the tender not be excluded even if the information is missing, whereas the sixth had said that in that case elimination for falling below the threshold is lawful; with a scoring threshold in the documents, the seventh cannot stand as written. Nor does it rule on the challenged quality, patient-reception, informed-consent and maintenance sub-criteria, or on the clarification the appellant sought. What survives is the first step: where the documents link a form to scoring rather than to admission, leaving it out costs points but does not lead to exclusion, and what is clearly stated in the technical proposal must be scored.

A discount above the threshold in the documents and an award with no request for justification: annulled, and what was filed afterwards does not count

Maintenance of the electrical, heating and plumbing systems of a town council in Navarre. The procurement documents set the abnormally low threshold at a 17% discount where fewer than five tenders were submitted. The successful tenderer offered 17.78% and was awarded the contract without the adversarial procedure being opened. The second-ranked tenderer brought a claim and the council conceded. The review body treats that as a concession under Article 75 of the Law on Administrative Jurisdiction, which is accepted unless it amounts to a manifest breach of the law (Decision 64/2026), and finds none: once the threshold is exceeded, the adversarial procedure is mandatory, and leaving it out is a defect that cannot be cured. The award is annulled and the procedure goes back so that it can be carried out. Two points are worth keeping. After the claim had been filed, the council asked for the justification on its own initiative and the successful tenderer supplied it; the review body does not look at it, because the claim automatically suspends the contested act and with it the procedure, and the complaint is precisely that the step was missing before the award. And the alternative request to exclude the successful tenderer falls away: the review body reviews, and does not itself carry out a step that belongs to the contracting authority (Decision 87/2025). There are no costs against the authority either, since the regional law only provides for a fine on a claimant who acts recklessly and loses entirely. Navarre decides under its own Regional Law 2/2018 (here, Article 98), not under the LCSP, and the remedy is called a special claim; the national equivalent is Article 149 LCSP.

An 87-million hospital cleaning contract: two criteria, the software transfer clause, unreasoned standing thresholds and two salaries below the minimum wage all fall

Cleaning and disinfection of a hospital complex of the Canary Islands Health Service, four lots, estimated value 87,518,827.52 euros. The procurement documents were challenged by two sector employers' associations, which have standing under Article 48 LCSP. They asked for the documents or the whole procedure to be annulled and the review body refuses: it annuls five items and keeps the rest. The first is the clause on the traceability software, which required the contractor for lot 1 to grant an indefinite, transferable licence that third parties could modify, and made the tool «mandatory or integrable» for the other lots without setting interfaces or costs. Rights of use that outlast the contract are not unlawful in themselves, but the file does not explain why a less burdensome means would not do. The second is two automatic criteria worth five points each: one scored functions the technical specifications already required as a minimum, without saying where the added value lay, and the other, a yes-or-no criterion, rewarded «ownership» of the software without making clear which commitment earned the points or what advantage ownership brings. The third is the budget, on one point only: the supporting report gives 16,322.51 and 15,911 euros as gross annual salary for two job categories, below the 17,094 euros of the 2026 minimum wage, without identifying supplements that make up the difference. The other financial complaints (shortfalls, materials, holidays, absenteeism) fail for lack of alternative evidence. The fourth is economic and technical standing for lots 1 and 2, where a turnover of 14.7 and 2.5 million euros was required alongside a far less demanding alternative classification. The figures are within Articles 87 and 90, but the report merely repeats the statutory parameter, and Article 116(4) requires an explanation of why they are needed. The arithmetical comparison with the classification, by contrast, is rejected. The fifth is the paragraph that made every environmental performance condition an essential obligation as a block, including a duty to supply whatever information was requested: Article 211(1)(f) requires such obligations to be listed precisely. Two points are useful in any challenge to procurement documents. What the authority explains for the first time in its report on the appeal cannot make up for what was missing from the file. And announcing that a clause will be corrected does not deprive the appeal of its purpose until new documents have been approved and published; the staff transfer list did lose its purpose, because the corrected one was actually published. The procedure goes back to before the affected documents were approved, with a full new period for tenders. Among the grounds dismissed are the claim that the contract was mixed because it included the software, and the challenge to a criterion on the quality of machinery. When citing it: the ruling upholds «grounds one to four» of one of the appeals, but the reasoning warns that it does not accept all their premises, and specifically rejects the idea that ownership and a licence are the same thing.

Making the new contractor subcontract the outgoing one amplifies its advantage: that clause falls, along with an unweighted 30-point criterion and the urgent procedure

Electronic monitoring of presence, alcohol consumption and location of people under the control of the Spanish prison service, estimated value 41,549,483.47 euros, run under the urgent procedure. The procurement documents were challenged by a company that later submitted a tender. Three of the four sets of grounds succeed. The first concerns the «technical offer» criterion: 30 points on a value judgment, split into two blocks (devices and training) with ten aspects of different kinds and no rule on the weight of each. The review body does not require a figure per aspect in every value-judgment criterion, but here the limits are insufficient and leave the evaluation committee to decide how much each aspect matters once the tenders are open, which is what the Lianakis judgment (C-532/06) and its own Decision 884/2025 prohibit. It also counts that the documents excluded any tenderer scoring under 50% on each value-judgment criterion. This breaches Article 146(3) LCSP. The second concerns the handover: the documents required the new contractor to subcontract the outgoing company for the first ninety days, subject to that company's agreement and with no maximum price. The advantage of an incumbent is acceptable as long as it is the natural one in the market, but the documents may not enlarge it. The clause makes the other tenderers dependent on a specific operator and on its willingness, and it fails the proportionality test, because continuity can be secured through obligations of result. The subcontracting clause and the section of the technical specifications that develops it are annulled; the criterion that scores the transition plan, by contrast, is valid. The third is the urgent procedure under Article 119: the fact that a service is essential justifies keeping it running, not shortening the time limits, where the previous contract had a known end date and nothing unforeseeable prevented an earlier start (Decision 902/2025). The complaint that replies to tenderers' questions had added a voice-communication requirement fails, because the authority published a clarification before the appeal was filed. The procedure goes back to before the documents were drafted. When citing it, note that the decision numbers the transition-plan clause sometimes as 12.B.1 and sometimes as 10.B.1.

Accepting the explanation for an abnormally low tender with no written report leaves the award without reasons

Social media management for a state-owned public body, estimated value 135,000 euros. The top-scoring tender was presumed abnormally low; the evaluation committee accepted its explanation and the contract was awarded to it. The second-ranked tenderer appealed. The minutes said the explanation had been «accepted by the requesting department», the award proposal said the price reduction «is justified», and the award referred to «the technical and economic reports». The file contained neither that approval nor any technical report, and the review body infers that the acceptance rested on verbal advice. Its case law does not demand exhaustive reasons when an explanation is accepted, and it allows reasons to be given by reference to reports (Article 88(6) of Law 39/2015; Supreme Court judgment of 11 February 2011, appeal 161/2009), but for that the report has to exist and be in the file. Without it, the appellant cannot contest reasons it does not know. The award is annulled and the procedure goes back to before the acceptance so that a reasoned decision is issued. On access to the file, which was given in part and without copies on grounds of confidentiality, the review body recalls Article 133(1) LCSP: a restriction requires identifying which information is confidential, why, and how it has been weighed against the rights of the defence, and here the successful tenderer had not marked its explanation as confidential and there was no record of what was shown and what was withheld. It does not decide this as a separate ground and folds it into the failure to give reasons. Read the remedy carefully: the decision neither excludes the successful tenderer nor assesses whether the tender is viable; it only orders reasons to be given. If the authority accepts the explanation again with a report, that new decision is the one to challenge.

A single overall figure for salary costs does not satisfy Article 100(2), and the staff transfer annex does not fill the gap

Lifeguard, rescue, first-aid and accessible beach services in a Valencian municipality, estimated value 635,844.41 euros. The procurement documents were challenged by a sector employers' association, which the review body holds has standing under the last sentence of Article 48 LCSP (Decisions 617/2026 and 1559/2024). The budget was broken down into indirect costs, salary costs, overheads and profit, and the reference collective agreement appeared in the annex listing the staff to be taken over. What was missing was a breakdown of the 513,797.14 euros of salary costs by job category and gender, with the number of workers, shifts or hours for each. The review body applies its narrow reading of that provision (Decision 739/2019), which confines it to services where labour is the main cost, relates to the staff employed in performing the contract and forms part of the price, and finds all three conditions met. The staff transfer annex does not fill the gap, because it does not link its data to the budget figure. The second successful ground is that the budget is too low. The association submitted a calculation by post that came to 542,033.20 euros. The contracting authority did not produce its own and merely corrected the appellant's by spreading social security contributions over 2,880 hours a year (twelve thirty-day months at eight hours), when the maximum annual working time used by the appellant is 1,752. Since that was its only objection and it does not undermine the calculation, the budget is held to be insufficient. The authority's argument that one tender had been submitted did not change the outcome. The sections on the tender budget and the estimated value are annulled, and the procedure goes back to before the documents were drafted. The appeal is upheld only in part because the complaint that the estimated value was unjustified fails: it matched the budget because there were no extensions or modifications. That section falls anyway, as a consequence of the shortfall.

«Satisfactorily meets the specification» is not a reason, and the report on the appeal comes too late: the whole tender falls

Supply of furniture for the new municipal library of Dosrius (Barcelona), lot 1, estimated value 259,292.65 euros. The qualitative award criterion, worth up to 40 points, consisted only of a four-level scale (identical or equivalent to the design, satisfactorily meets it, «less satisfactory» aspects, «inferior» aspects) without saying which features of each product would be compared, how much each would weigh or how a category would become points. The technical report was just a table of scores. On the shelving, the item that carried most weight, the tender board merely said of the winning bid, which offered an equivalent model rather than the one in the design, that the proposed element satisfactorily met the design's requirements, and gave the same 100% to the two tenderers offering the designed product without explaining that either. The review body finds the reasons inadequate and traces the defect back to the procurement documents themselves, which blur the line between meeting the technical specifications and earning points above the minimum. The supplementary report by the municipal architect, attached to the council's Article 56(2) LCSP report, explained the bids better, but it is not accepted: it is new reasoning, supplied too late. What makes the decision worth citing is the remedy. The appellant, ranked second, asked for the bids to be reassessed or, in the alternative, for the successful tenderer to be excluded. The review body annuls the award, the technical report and the entire procedure, because once the formula-based envelopes have been opened, qualitative judgements cannot be made afresh without compromising impartiality (Articles 139(2) and 146(2) LCSP and Article 27 of Royal Decree 817/2009). Sending the matter back with the existing scores kept is reserved for errors that do not require a new qualitative judgement, or for criteria that involve checking documents. Two cautions: the appeal is upheld «in the sense set out in the sixth legal ground», which is where the annulment of the whole procedure is found; and the appellant had first obtained access to the bids and made submissions to the council, which rejected them as directed against a merely procedural step.

Using a reply to a clarification request to change the date of the price benchmark amounts to amending the procurement documents

Supply of green electricity under a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) for the Tarragona water consortium, 2027-2029, estimated value 24,000,000 euros. The technical specifications capped each year's price at the OMIP futures market closing price on a set date, Friday 6 March 2026, chosen to give firms the weekend before submitting on the Monday. The tender was delayed, the deadline became 19 March, and a reply to a clarification request on the buyer profile, binding under the contract summary, implied that the benchmark was now the day before the deadline, without correcting the specifications or the tender form and without extending the deadline. As a result, firms priced on different benchmarks and, as the authority itself later acknowledged, the evaluation report applied the 6 March price and the successful tenderer exceeded the caps for two years on the 18 March price. The second-ranked tenderer, 0.42 points behind, appealed seeking the winner's exclusion, and the contracting authority conceded in substance. The review body upholds the appeal, but on different grounds. In its view a reply that changes the benchmark price is relevant information and also a significant amendment of the procurement documents, because it affects the contract amount, and it required the deadline to be extended (Article 136(2) LCSP, together with Article 138(3), under which a reply binds only if the documents say so and it is published; Article 47(3) of Directive 2014/24/EU). The confusion cannot be laid at the tenderers' door: it is a basic defect in the procurement documents, contrary to the principles in Articles 1 and 132(1). The review body therefore does not order the successful tenderer's exclusion, nor does it accept the validation under Article 52 of Law 39/2015 that the authority had prepared in order to award the contract to the appellant. It annuls the award and sends the procedure back to the point where the defect came to light, the technical validation of the price evaluation report, for the authority to act as the law requires. When citing it, do not present it as a win for the party seeking exclusion: the decision also says the breach cannot be cured at this stage of the procedure without affecting those principles, and it does not spell out what the authority must do next.

A justification for not dividing into lots that arrives with the report on the appeal counts, but it must be published and the deadline reopened

Modernisation works at Badalona Municipal Hospital (two added storeys, an enlarged inner courtyard and phased refurbishment), estimated value 12,784,496.66 euros, not divided into lots. The appeal is brought by the Catalan association of installation firms, which has standing as a collective representative of the sector once it has proved that its governing body approved the appeal. The file justified the decision with generic references to coordinating the phases and keeping the hospital running. The review body finds this inadequate, because the same reasoning could be used for any comparable works contract (Article 99(3) LCSP, Article 3 of Catalan Decree-Law 3/2025 and recitals 78 and 79 of Directive 2014/24/EU; Supreme Court judgment of 26 June 2023 and Catalan High Court judgments of 15 October and 9 December 2025). With its report on the appeal, however, the contracting entity supplied a specific technical report (several health and safety plans, the split of work between contractors, overlapping responsibilities, site facilities inside a working hospital), and the review body finds it reasonable and tied to the works. Because it had not been placed in the file or published, the appeal is upheld so that the report is published on the procurement platform and the tender deadline extended, with unaffected steps kept (Articles 99(3) and 116(4) LCSP). The documents are not annulled and there is no order to divide into lots, which is what the appellant wanted; the review body adds that SMEs can take part through a consortium, by relying on the capacity of other entities, or through the subcontracting the documents allow. Two points for anyone challenging a similar decision. Against a generic justification in the file, the appeal succeeds. But the Catalan review body accepts a full justification supplied during the appeal, and what the appellant obtains is publication and more time, not lots. This sits uneasily with other review bodies' line that what an authority explains in its report on the appeal cannot make up for what was missing from the file.

A single-brand software platform, made-to-measure vehicles, flat penalties and ten years with no payback calculation: the documents fall

Street cleaning in La Solana (Ciudad Real), estimated value 4,097,044.50 euros, ten-year term. The appeal is brought by the sector association of public cleaning firms, which the review body holds has standing against the procurement documents under the last sentence of Article 48 LCSP (Decision 126/2024), though not against other acts. Four of the five grounds succeed. The technical specifications required the purchase of licences for a named brand of software platform, with no report justifying exclusivity: the public need, the decision says, is not to buy licences for a particular platform, even the one the council already uses, but to have an interoperable platform. The sweeper and the electric vehicle were described down to the millimetre (wheelbase, turning radius, axle position), which points to one commercial model. Both breach Article 126(1) and (6), read with the CJEU's DYKA Plastics judgment (C-424/23). The penalty clause also falls: staying within the percentage caps of Article 192 is not enough where minor breaches are defined as a residual category and a subcontracting breach carries up to 50% of the subcontract with no gradation, when the documents themselves class it as serious. So does the term: the ten years rested on 600,000 euros of investment with no breakdown, no payback period calculated with the formula in Article 10 of Royal Decree 55/2017 and no proof that depreciation was a significant cost (Article 29(4); Decision 1132/2021). The Article 100(2) ground fails: with an annual price for the service, rather than a price per hour or per worker, salary costs need not be broken down, even when they make up most of the price. The ruling says the appeal is upheld in part, but it annuls the documents in full.

The documents asked for ENS certification, and self-assessment does not count: one point that changes the winner

Legionella prevention and control for the municipal water company of Cullera, estimated value 217,470.18 euros. The procurement documents, which nobody challenged, awarded one point for each of three certificates: EMAS, ISO 27001 and the Spanish National Security Framework (ENS). The successful tenderer scored 95.99 and the appellant, ranked second, 95. The ENS point had gone to a firm that held no certification, only the self-assessment the framework allows at its basic level, and the contracting authority admitted in its report that the firm did not comply «literally», while arguing for a purposive reading. The review body rejects it: where the wording is clear, logical and purposive readings have no place, and certification, issued by an accredited body after a formal audit, is not the same as the firm's own self-assessment. The award and the signed contract are annulled, and the procedure goes back to the assessment stage with that point removed from the successful tenderer and all other scores kept. The appellant would move into first place by one hundredth of a point. Two cautions when citing it. The appeal referred to EMAS when it meant ENS, and the review body read it in context. And the appellant also argued that the contract was signed before the deadline for appeal had run, but the review body does not address the point: the contract falls only as a consequence of annulling the award.

Where the documents ask for R&D&I projects, a CV of training and digital skills work does not meet the profile

Training and coordination services for the network of innovation agents of the Valencian Innovation Agency, estimated value 125,676.14 euros. The procurement documents required three graduates to be assigned to the contract, two of them with «extensive knowledge of methodologies for planning and managing R&D&I projects», proved by CVs listing the projects they had worked on, with enough detail to verify them. The second-ranked tenderer appealed. The successful tenderer's CVs described training, digital skills and employability work, and the technical report found they complied «rigorously and amply» without naming a single project. The contracting authority argued that the contract is about training and that applying innovation methodologies is enough. The review body rejects that reading because it waters the requirement down: there must be a concrete, verifiable link between the experience claimed and the technical content of the requirement, and accepting any experience in innovation, digitalisation or training would empty the clause of meaning. It decides on the wording of the documents alone, without taking up the Frascati Manual definitions of R&D relied on by the appellant. For anyone preparing a similar appeal, the key point is the remedy: the ruling simply upholds the appeal, and the fifth legal ground orders the authority to let the successful tenderer correct its Article 150.2 documents and then reassess, not to exclude it. If exclusion is the aim, it has to be sought expressly, with reasons why the defect cannot be corrected. It also helped that the appellant had asked for access to the file before appealing: the review body decided on the CVs the appellant supplied, because they were not in the file the authority sent.

Three welded parts, a one-piece base and exact dimensions: the «triple lock» of made-to-measure specifications

Supply of waste containers for Dos Hermanas (Seville), estimated value 289,045 euros. The technical specifications required a body of no more than three parts joined by continuous welding, a one-piece base, and exact dimensions and weights with no ranges. A manufacturer of modular containers appealed, with its own expert report showing watertightness and compatibility with side-loading trucks. The review body upholds the appeal. The closer a specification comes to product architecture, the more reasons it needs, and Article 126(6) LCSP applies even where no brand is named if the documents describe an industrial design (CJEU DYKA Plastics, C-424/23, and Roche Lietuva, C-413/17). The number of parts is a design choice, a one-piece base prescribes a way of manufacturing rather than a result, and compatibility with the collection trucks is expressed through tolerances. Taken together, the three requirements make the specifications made to measure: the tender stops being competition between offers and becomes a check of identity with a single design. The reasons had to be in the file when the documents were approved: the authority's report on the appeal cannot supply them (Decision 227/2025; CJEU C-101/22 P). The appellant only had to show reasonable indications, and the review body counts the fact that no tender was submitted as one of them. The appeal is upheld only in part because the review body declines to rewrite the specifications by reference to UNE standards, as requested, since its role is to review, not to replace. It annuls the technical specifications for both lots and orders them to be redrafted in terms of performance or, where that is not possible, with each requirement justified in the file and published with the new tender.

A bank of free hours «at the authority's disposal» is not an improvement linked to the subject matter

Cleaning of municipal buildings in Cabra (Córdoba), estimated value 1,961,370.07 euros. Two clauses of the administrative specifications were challenged. The first was the budget: the documents gave only an overall figure, and the hours per building appeared in a separately published feasibility study, with no job categories, no hourly cost and no total salary cost. The review body requires the breakdown of salary costs under the collective agreement to appear in the specifications in verifiable form, and a general reference to the agreement is not enough. One point to know before citing this part: the decision quotes as verbatim a version of Article 100 that is not the one in force, and Article 100(2) LCSP allows the breakdown to be given in the specifications «or document governing the tender», an alternative the decision does not mention. The second clause is the more useful one: 10 points for offering up to 50 free hours at the council's disposal, at no cost. The review body annuls it under Article 145 LCSP, because the hours are not in the technical specifications or tied to areas, frequencies or tasks: it is not an intensification of the required service, but a separate, undefined service not provided for in the technical documents. It cites Supreme Court judgment 793/2026 and distinguishes its own Decision 202/2025, which did accept a bank of hours because it intensified the service in the specifications and abnormally low tenders were controlled. That is the decision a contracting authority will rely on. Both clauses are removed and the procedure goes back to before the documents were approved.

Medical device label in English only: failing a single requirement is enough to exclude

Multi-supplier framework agreement for drainage materials for the Jaén provincial purchasing centre of the Andalusian Health Service, estimated value 4,788,304.60 euros. In lot 49 (three-chamber chest drainage) one of the successful tenderers challenges the inclusion of the other, because if that tenderer is removed it becomes the sole supplier of the lot. The other firm's sample carried a label entirely in English, whereas Article 5 of Royal Decree 192/2023 requires Spanish. The technical specifications referred generally to the labelling rules. The contracting authority acknowledged the defect with photographs and conceded. The review body applies by analogy Article 75(2) of the Law on Administrative Jurisdiction, under which a concession must be accepted unless it amounts to a manifest breach of the law, and finds there is none. It grounds the exclusion in its case law that failing to meet the procurement documents admits no gradation by number of breaches, and in Decision 44/2026 of the Galician review body, which excluded the same commercial product in another tender. The award of lot 49 is annulled so that the tender is excluded and the procedure continues to an award to whoever is entitled. The other grounds (CE marking showing a different notified body from the certificate, the fact that samples cannot be replaced, and a mandatory check as opposed to technical discretion) are left unexamined. Two points for an appeal: the product's health regulations enter the documents through the general reference to them, and a supplier already appointed under a multi-supplier framework agreement has standing to seek the exclusion of the others.

«Basic» with the same wording for five products gives no reasons; but the review body orders reasons, not a new score

Andalusian Health Service framework agreement for operating theatre and video-surgery materials, estimated value 115,806,865.46 euros. The documents set a technical threshold of 24.5 points on a three-level scale (excellent, optimal and basic, the last scoring zero), and the appellant was excluded from four lots with «basic» on every criterion. The technical report used the same two sentences for all five products and, for one, added «product with deficiencies» without saying what they were. The review body finds the reasons inadequate: a «basic» rating cannot rest on a generic formula with no reference to the specific parameters assessed, explaining the deficiencies was required and not merely advisable, and reasons given for other tenders cannot stand in for the reasons owed on this one. The explanations the authority offered in its report on the appeal (that the physical sample prevails over the catalogue, or that the other tenders have advantages the appellant leaves out) should have been in the technical report. It makes no finding of manifest error or unequal treatment, treating both as part of the failure to give reasons. Read the remedy carefully before citing it. The sixth legal ground speaks of a new reasoned assessment, but the seventh, to which the ruling refers, sends the matter back only for reasons to be given «strictly respecting the score already awarded», and expressly refuses a new assessment. That is what makes it partial: the exclusion is not annulled, and the door is opened to challenging whatever reasons are then given. Anyone bringing a similar appeal should ask expressly for the exclusion to be annulled and for a fresh assessment, and argue that giving reasons after the challenge empties the right of defence of content, which is what the same review body held the same day in Decision 615/2026. One more detail: the appeal and the interim measure also covered lot 17, and the ruling says nothing about it.

A tenderer must commit to assigning the filling station; only the successful tenderer must show it is available

Fuel supply for the municipal fleet of Puerto del Rosario, estimated value 344,437.48 euros. The technical specifications required a distribution point within the municipality. The appellant offered a station on port land and, in case that one stopped operating, a second station owned by a third party. The evaluation committee asked it to clarify availability, because the company itself had applied for a permit to dismantle the station and the Port Authority treated the concession as expired, and the contracting authority then excluded it. The review body annuls the exclusion on the basis of its case law on Article 76 LCSP: a tenderer must commit to assigning the resources, not have them at its disposal already; actual availability is proved with the Article 150.2 documents, and requiring it at the time of tendering is disproportionate (CJEU judgment of 27 October 2005, C-234/03). Nor was there proof that the operating authorisation had been revoked, whatever the position regarding the land title. Offering a third party's facility is not reliance on the capacities of other entities where the tenderer already meets the minimum requirements on its own. The decision adds an equal-treatment ground: the successful tenderer was asked for no proof that it could use the station it offered, whose prior notification had been filed by another company, even one in its group. Reviewing the file, the review body also notes that registrations required by the procurement documents as authorisations to pursue the activity were missing, and these cannot be supplied through third parties. That is why the rollback goes back to before tenderers were admitted, not just to the assessment. Formally the challenge is upheld in part: the first appeal, brought against the committee's proposal to exclude, is declared inadmissible, because the exclusion was decided by the contracting authority and the committee only proposed it.

The Article 150.2 clock starts when the notice is opened, not when it is sent

Outpatient healthcare services in Denia for a Social Security mutual insurer. The company had been proposed for award and was excluded for missing the deadline to file the documents required under Article 150.2 LCSP, with a penalty of 3% of the contract value. Everything turned on one date: the authority counted from 5 March, when it published an internal minute and sent the individual notice; the company counted from 13 March, when it actually opened the notification. The review body sides with the company: the published minute was not a request (it did not identify the documents, set no deadline and gave no warning of exclusion) and, because the very act notified had not also been published on the buyer profile, the rule in the fifteenth additional provision of the LCSP does not apply and time runs from access. The ten working days therefore expired on 30 March, and the documents filed on the 26th were in time. The exclusion and the penalty are annulled, with a rollback so that the documents are treated as filed. Two points worth taking into the pleadings: the Article 150.2 request is generally capable of remedy, and the review body reasons that it is “particularly damaging” for a contracting authority to insist on formalistic readings when the party left out is the one offering the best value for money. And one honest caution when citing it: the review body itself recalls that in its Decision 260/2026 of 12 February it reached a different result.

Calling it a works contract shuts out the firm that supplies the equipment

Audiovisual works in Building B of the Madrid Congress Centre, the future seat of UN Tourism, tendered by the Spanish tourism institute with an estimated value of 1,348,080.95 euros. The procurement documents classified it as a mixed contract whose main element was works, and on that basis required a works contractor classification as technical standing. An audiovisual company challenged the documents: the main element is the supply of the equipment, and installing it is ancillary. The review body reads the technical description of the project and agrees: the items to be supplied, and work consisting mostly of installing them, fall within the supply contract of Article 18 LCSP rather than the works contract of Article 13, without prejudice to the link between the two that Article 34.2 requires before they can be merged. The challenge is upheld and the documents annulled as to the classification of the main element and, expressly, as to the requirement of a works contractor classification and the way technical capacity is to be proved, with a rollback to before their approval. The practical lesson is about timing: this is won by challenging the procurement documents, not later; a firm shut out for lacking a wrongly required classification rarely gets a second chance.

The published formula rewarded the lower offer, and the committee patched it on the fly

Urgent courier services and transport of biological samples for a Social Security mutual insurer, with an estimated value of 3,120,000 euros. Under the automatic criterion “reduction of the insurance payment”, the formula in the procurement documents was framed so that it gave more points to whoever offered less of a reduction. With an offer of 0% the calculation broke down, division by zero, so the evaluation committee replaced that 0% with 0.10% “purely for the arithmetic”. The result: the tenderer offering 0% took 11 points and the one offering 0.25% took 4.40, and the contract changed hands. The review body upholds the challenge: a defective formula in the procurement documents cannot prejudice a tenderer who bid in reliance on the wording of the criterion, because those documents are the law of the contract, obscurity does not favour the party that caused it (Article 1288 of the Civil Code) and a purposive reading applies: the greater the reduction offered, the higher the score. The award is annulled and the procedure rolled back to the assessment of that single criterion, leaving the rest in place. It is useful in two common situations: where the published formula rewards the wrong way round, and where the committee “fixes” defective documents by inventing a figure that appears nowhere in them.

A price-per-day budget with no cost breakdown fails Article 100.2, even with a study behind it

School transport across the five provinces of Castilla-La Mancha for three school years, with a tender budget of 31,773,847.35 euros. The trade association for the sector challenged the procurement documents: the price was below market, above all because of fuel, and the costs were not broken down. The contracting authority relied on Decision 1060/2021, arguing that where unit prices are used a breakdown by unit is enough. The review body corrects that reading. A breakdown into direct costs, indirect costs and other expenses is unnecessary only when the authority buys a standardised service that has a market price of its own. School transport is not one, because it requires buses, drivers, fuel, insurance and routes to be organised to measure, and without a breakdown the objective anchor required by Article 100.2 LCSP is missing (Decisions 1343/2024, 318/2025, 1246/2025, 1636/2025 and 617/2026). The annex to the documents gave only daily prices by distance band and number of seats. The published reports did not break them down, and the study by the engineering firm engaged for the purpose was never published: the authority produced it with the file. The review body therefore does not decide whether the budget is too low, because the appellant could not challenge estimates it had never seen. Sections 3 and 4 of the contract summary, the tender budget and the estimated value, are annulled, and the approval of the documents falls with them. The claim for price revision is rejected: the contract runs for three years, and Article 103.2 does not allow revision in service contracts with an investment payback period of less than five years. There is also a point on standing: the sector association has it under the last sentence of Article 48.

“Glycerol or similar”: a product with no synthetic carrier did not comply, and the first and second-ranked tenderers both fall

Supply of demineralised bone matrix implants for a Madrid hospital, estimated value 797,727 euros. The technical specifications required, among other things, a composition of at least 70% matrix by volume and a carrier of the “glycerol or similar” type. The third-ranked tenderer appealed. The successful tenderer's product was described in its own data sheet as “100% allograft” with no synthetic carriers, and the second-ranked tenderer's documents proved neither the matrix percentage nor the carrier. Reviewing the tenders in light of the appeal, the requesting department agreed with the appellant and the contracting authority conceded. The successful tenderer argued that its carrier, collagen of human origin from the same donor, counted as “similar”. The review body recalls that a concession does not relieve it of examining the merits, since it applies Article 75 of the Law on Administrative Jurisdiction as an interpretive guide, and it relies on the presumption of accuracy of the technical report, which the successful tenderer's submissions do not rebut. The award is annulled and both the successful and the second-ranked tenderers are to be excluded. Two points worth keeping for an appeal: a tenderer ranked third has standing to challenge both of those ahead of it, and the authority may acknowledge in its report on the appeal that it accepted a non-compliant tender, without being bound by its earlier assessment. One caution when citing it: the reading of “similar” as synthetic comes from the requesting department, not from the specifications, and the review body accepts it as a technical judgment without interpreting it.

The price formula had no ceiling, and the whole procedure falls

Framework agreement for technical assistance in planning and building control for Onda town council, two lots and an estimated value of 1,188,000 euros. The formula for the price criterion published in the contract schedule was mathematically defective (with no ceiling, it could produce scores above the maximum or run away altogether) and the evaluation committee ended up applying a different one. The applicant finished fourth, four hundredths behind the third. The review body restates that the procurement documents are the law of the contract and that scoring with an unpublished formula breaches Articles 1, 132 and 145 LCSP. The point that matters for anyone who did not challenge the documents in time is the second one: an indirect challenge is allowed, because the defect only became apparent once the formula was applied to the actual discounts, so the deadline had not expired (the eVigilo case law and the Supreme Court judgment of 22 March 2021, appeal 4883/2019). In the review body's words, a formula with no ceiling, capable of producing scores above the statutory maximum or tending to infinity, cannot underpin a lawful award criterion and in itself renders the clause void. It is worth measuring what you ask for: the operative part annuls the schedule entry, the approval of the procurement documents and the whole procedure, so the extra points the review body accepts the applicant should have had under another criterion never take effect and the contract must be re-advertised. The abnormally low tender complaint is dismissed.

An authorisation required by the specifications cannot be borrowed from a third party

Maintenance of gardens, green areas and street trees for Massamagrell town council, with an estimated value of 2,167,844 euros. The technical specifications required tenderers to show they were authorised to treat, prune, transport and remove palm trees affected by the red palm weevil, under a 2009 regional order. The successful tenderer did not hold that authorisation and relied on an agreement with an authorised firm. The review body upholds the challenge and annuls the award: this is a professional authorisation under Article 65.2 LCSP, required when the tender is submitted, not a performance condition that can be met through third-party resources or passed on by subcontracting (Articles 75 and 215), because it goes to the core of the contract rather than to ancillary work, following Supreme Court judgment 1226/2025 of 1 October. This, says the review body, is not an authorisation whose requirement unfolds during performance, nor one that can be delegated by subcontracting to another undertaking. Two cautions when citing it: although the reasoning speaks of grounds for exclusion, the operative part only annuls the award, without ordering exclusion or a rollback; and the alternative complaints, the external technical report under Article 326 and unstated sub-criteria, fall away unexamined, so the decision is no authority on those points. The practical reading is simple: whatever the technical specifications say tenderers must prove, they must prove with the tender.

A report that praises both tenders is not a statement of reasons

Insurance broking and advisory services for the Asturian public waste company, with an estimated value of 952,000 euros. All four tenders tied at 60 points on price, so the contract was decided by one point on methodology and another on team improvement: 100 against 98. The technical report described both tenders in equally glowing terms, with not a single criticism of the lower-scoring one, no comparison between them and no breakdown of the partial scores for the three sub-criteria, which breaches Article 151.2(c) LCSP. The review body recalls that technical discretion gives way where there is a failure to state reasons, arbitrariness, discrimination or manifest error, and upholds the challenge: no comparative analysis is carried out between the content of the two tenders showing the respects in which the higher-scoring one is superior. That said, it is worth reading the operative part to the end before celebrating: it orders a rollback so that a new, properly reasoned report can be issued “without altering the scores awarded”, so the outcome may simply be the same result better explained. Hence the lesson for the pleadings: when price is tied and everything turns on the qualitative assessment, asking only for reasons gets you reasons; to change the ranking you must also plead manifest error or arbitrariness.

Two different yardsticks within the same automatic criterion

Design of a 50-metre indoor swimming pool for Santa Eulària des Riu town council, an estimated value of 249,029 euros and a contract above the EU thresholds. The procurement documents required a letter of commitment to the highest sustainability level to be filed with the tender in order to take the 20 points of that automatic criterion. The applicant was given zero for merely ticking “yes” in the annex, while the successful tenderer was given twenty for a reference inside that same annex, with no separate letter. The review body partly upholds the challenge: the contracting authority applied two different thresholds within one and the same automatic criterion. The defect found is the unequal treatment, not that the authority's reading was wrong, the review body reasons even accepting that reading, so the rollback reaches only that criterion, strips the successful tenderer of its score and does not require the applicant to be given points, who may well end up at zero again. The other two complaints are dismissed, and the first is of interest in itself: the winning technical memorandum exceeded the maximum length and the review body applies proportionality (Supreme Court judgment 523/2022 of 4 May), because the documents did not attach exclusion to the excess and the surplus had no qualitative weight.

If the hours are paid out of the profit margin, the low tender no longer holds

Technical, financial and legal assistance to prepare the concession for waste collection and street cleaning for Eivissa town council, with an estimated value of 194,749 euros. The runner-up challenged the acceptance of the justification given for a tender presumed abnormally low. The review body does not decide whether the hours set out in the specifications were binding: it rules on the winner's own figures. Once the winner accepted that eighty-four senior consultant hours had been charged to overheads and profit, that item is used up and the margin falls to 583.74 euros, with no justification for zero absenteeism, the authority itself had budgeted 8.1 %, for the near absence of travel and subsistence on an island, or for the low cost of materials. A mere reference to using in-house staff alongside external collaborators, the decision notes, does not necessarily remove the costs of possible absence. The award is annulled and the procedure continues with that justification rejected. The challenge succeeds only in part because of what it does not obtain: the applicant is not declared the winner and is refused access to the file (Article 52 LCSP, no real prejudice shown). To attack someone else's low tender, what works here is the internal consistency of their own cost breakdown, not an argument about the number of hours.

Extending the guarantee is not funding the future upkeep of the works

Consolidation and restoration of a listed jetty, advertised by Águilas town council with an estimated value of 3,305,785 euros. Automatic criterion 3.3 rewarded extending the guarantee period for the rest of the works, and the documents set no cap. The applicant was asked to justify the viability of its offer on that point and ended up with zero. The review body upholds the challenge and orders a rollback to before that request: under an automatic criterion with no maximum, the authority must stick to the objective rule in the documents, with no margin of appreciation, and the zero rested on a mistaken legal premise, confusing the guarantee under Articles 107 and 110 LCSP, which answers for the contractor's breaches and defects, with a provision for maintaining the works. The documents themselves excluded from the guarantee any defects caused by inadequate maintenance by the administration. Tenderers, the decision states, cannot be required to set aside any sum beyond the guarantee required under Article 107 LCSP. Two reading notes: the complaint about the winner's civil liability insurance is dismissed, so the outcome is in substance a partial win even though the operative part does not say so, and access to the file is refused even though the council is found to have missed its deadline.

Withdrawal must be reasoned in the decision, not in the report to the review body

Framework agreement for the supply of disinfection and patient hygiene products for the Valencian health service, an estimated value of 15.2 million euros and thirty-eight lots. The administration withdrew lots 1 to 26 over defects in the technical specifications which it considered incurable. The applicant was the only tenderer for lots 13 and 14 and had already been proposed for award. The review body upholds the challenge: withdrawal under Article 152.4 LCSP is a bound power, not a discretionary one, and calls for strengthened reasons, whereas the decision relied on generic breaches of the documents without identifying clauses or lots, or explaining why they could not be cured. What the authority added later in its report to the review body does not cure the act: the lack of reasons in the contested decision cannot be made good by the justification contained in the report sent to this review body. It is worth knowing what is won and what is not. The annulment is formal: the procedure goes back so that, if appropriate, a fresh and properly reasoned withdrawal decision can be issued. The tender procedure is not reopened and those two lots are not awarded, and the review body expressly leaves undecided whether the defect was curable, along with the claims for damages and for the return of the guarantee.

An answer on the platform cannot add requirements the documents do not contain

Supply and installation of secure bicycle parking units for Mairena del Aljarafe town council, an estimated value of 475,800 euros and EU regional funding. Answering a question during the tender period, the authority required brands, models and commercial references, banned renders, infographics and graphic recreations, and asked for proof that the product already existed on the market. On that basis it excluded the applicant. The Andalusian review body annuls the exclusion because none of those three requirements appeared in the administrative or technical specifications, nor could be inferred from them: answers published to questions raised during the tender period may be binding in so far as they specify or interpret the documents, but not where they alter their content or objective meaning, or introduce new substantive requirements that cannot reasonably be inferred from their wording. It adds that if the authority needed those requirements it should have amended the documents or withdrawn and re-advertised, and that introducing them close to the deadline without extending it distorts competition; it also finds a failure to state reasons, no specification is identified as breached, and a lack of proportionality, since clarifications could have been sought. Mind the scope: the rollback returns the file to the moment before the exclusion so that the tender is assessed against the documents alone, but the mismatch in dimensions between the memorandum and the drawings is left undecided and the committee may exclude again if it gives reasons. And a practical rule: challenge the exclusion, not the clarification, because time runs from the act that harms you.

Listing flaws in the justification is not a viability assessment

Full corrective maintenance for the centres of a Social Security mutual insurer in Catalonia, three lots and an estimated value of 720,000 euros. The applicant, the incumbent contractor for the same lots, was presumed abnormally low in all three; it justified its prices with a cost breakdown per lot, the wage tables of each province's collective agreement and copies of its current contracts, and was excluded. The technical report raised eight objections: costs calculated on hours worked rather than billable hours, no allowance for wage rises in a 24+24-month contract without price revision, no bonuses or training, no explanation of where the travel and subsistence figures came from, a uniform cost lower than under its current contract, nothing for consumables or tools, errors in the gross salary for two lots, and an industrial profit too thin to absorb it all. It then concluded that “there is an operational risk”. The review body upholds the challenge because that is a bare assertion, not a reasoned technical judgement. Following its Decision 764/2026, the report required by Article 149.6 LCSP must conclude whether the tender can be performed as submitted, and the tenderer's assumptions are tested for technical, legal or economic soundness, not for whether they match the authority's own (Article 149.4 in fine). Here nobody quantified the impact of the omitted items, compared it with the declared margin, between 1.50 and 3.50 euros an hour depending on the lot, or explained why the corrections would exceed it. Merely finding errors or omissions is not enough to exclude, and a decision that simply adopts the report inherits its flaw. The procedure goes back so that the authority, after seeking any clarification it needs, makes that assessment. The review body declines to rule on each objection, since that would mean stepping into an assessment the authority never made. For anyone defending a low tender, that is the argument: insist that each omission be costed and set against the margin.

Technological continuity, yes, but with “or equivalent”

Subscription, maintenance and support for the API management platform of the state postal company Correos: an estimated value of 1.25 million euros, price as the sole award criterion and procurement documents naming the brand with nothing more. The platform had been chosen through open competition in 2021 and now runs critical processes. This is a utilities-sector contract, so the remedy is the claim under Royal Decree-law 3/2020 and the technical specifications are tested against its Article 45, with the LCSP applying in the alternative. The review body accepts that technological continuity can justify referring to a solution already in place when it was selected competitively but, following its Decision 488/2022, that does not excuse the authority from adding “or equivalent” or from giving strengthened reasons for specifications that restrict competition. It orders the words added, together with a precise definition of the technical, functional, compatibility and interoperability requirements any alternative will have to meet to prove equivalence. It also strikes down the requirement that advanced training be delivered only by the manufacturer's own staff: less restrictive options existed, such as requiring trainers certified or accredited by the manufacturer, and the entity merely said those services are provided “under closed technical conditions”. And it requires price as the sole criterion to be reconsidered: under Decision 132/2021, issued precisely in a case brought by Correos, the entity must show that the service is closed in every relevant respect, and support, maintenance and training allow quality differences between authorised operators. The complaint about the justification for outsourcing is dismissed. The procurement documents are annulled and the procedure goes back to before their approval. One procedural detail: the claimant was a natural person acting on their own behalf, and the review body grants standing on the pro actione principle.

No scoring report, a score the scale did not allow, and envelopes opened together

Home help service for El Viso town council (Córdoba), estimated at 3.26 million euros. Three tenderers scored 75 out of 75 on the automatic criteria, so the award was decided by the 25 points subject to value judgement. The evaluation committee itself admitted three times that there was no technical report, comparison table, scoring sheet or any document other than the minutes, whose only reasoning copied the criterion in the procurement documents: “taking into account the level of detail, clarity and usefulness of the procedures to be followed”. The Andalusian review body upholds the challenge on the combined weight of the defects. Repeating the criterion is not giving reasons, and nothing explains a 9.50 against an 8.00 within the same band (Article 146.2 LCSP and Article 35 of Law 39/2015). The attendance-control sub-criterion had three fixed values (5, 2 and 0.50 points) and the applicant was given 2.50, a score invented after the tenders were opened. Envelopes B and C were opened in the same session with no record of envelope B having been scored first. The two leading tenders exceeded the 95 % of the total score that Annex 8 set as the abnormally-low threshold, and the Article 149 procedure was never opened; the council argued that all tenderers offered the same annual discount, but the documents measured abnormality by score. And the award was published with a bare “best tender submitted” and no breakdown (Article 151.2). The notice's appeal deadline, which expired three months before the award itself, is treated as a harmless irregularity, since the applicant challenged in time. The debatable part is the remedy. Having reasoned that the sequence in Article 146.2 is mandatory and cannot be rebuilt after the fact, the review body orders only a partial rollback that keeps the automatic scores already known, and the committee rescores envelope B knowing them. Then come a reasoned report applying the Annex 7 scale, the Article 149 procedure and a new award with the breakdown.

Scanning high-speed trains is not the same as being installed on a 250 km/h line

Supply, assembly and commissioning of pantograph condition monitoring systems on high-speed lines for ADIF-Alta Velocidad, with an estimated value of 8.25 million euros, through the claim procedure of Royal Decree-law 3/2020. For technical ability, the procurement documents required systems of the same characteristics to have been installed on operating lines with speeds of 250 km/h or more and still in service when the contract was advertised, proven by a list of works and certificates of satisfactory performance. The successful consortium produced a certificate from the Belgian rail infrastructure manager stating that its scanners were specified for trains between 5 and 300 km/h and inspected high-speed trains daily in Brussels; and, when asked for clarification, its own statement placing them on high-speed lines 2 and 4. The entity's engineers accepted this on a functional reading: the units sit on a conventional line that continues the high-speed one, and those trains run over it. The review body rejects that. The documents asked for a line speed, not an equipment capability, and the functional reading departs both from their wording and from the entity's own conduct, since it had asked precisely for the line's maximum speed; a tenderer's own statement cannot stand in for the certificate, and the certificate did not even break down amounts for the last three years. Accepting it would amount to rewriting the selection requirements at award stage. Before reaching that point the review body dealt with the lack of access: the consortium had marked its whole technical-ability file as confidential, the entity accepted that without reasons, and the applicant had to build its claim on guesses from the Belgian manager's website. The review body granted access under Article 52 LCSP, and the extended claim brought a letter from the Belgian manager itself, which the review body takes as confirming that the lines are not high-speed. The award is annulled and the consortium's tender is to be excluded.

Clarification cannot add the converter that was missing

Supply of an endobronchial ultrasound bronchoscope for the pulmonology department of Hospital Universitario Príncipe de Asturias, simplified open procedure with two tenderers. The technical specifications required a video processor with “high-definition (HD) image resolution with 4K output capability” and an on-site response to faults within eight working hours. The data sheet of the processor offered stated Full HD and 1080p outputs, and the after-sales documentation spoke of 48 working hours. The committee asked for clarification; the successful tenderer replied that an HD-4K converter was included among the accessories and that it accepted the specified response time. The review body keeps the two issues carefully apart. In principle the specifications did not require native 4K output and a converter would have done, provided it was part of the original tender, identified and documented; but it appeared nowhere in the list of items, the price offer or any data sheet, and the generic clause on “accessories needed for proper operation” cannot cover adding later a component essential to meet a minimum requirement. The response time works the same way: if the tender states 48 hours and the specifications require eight, a later statement of compliance changes the tender, unless the tender itself made it absolutely clear that the 48 hours gave way to any shorter period. General acceptance of the procurement documents does not cure a specific figure that contradicts them. The request itself was badly framed, the review body adds, since it already recorded that compliance could not be seen. Clarification only resolves doubts about what the tender already contains (Decision 207/2026); it cannot complete or correct it. The applicant had relied on Article 176.1 LCSP, which belongs to competitive dialogue; the review body decides on its general case law on the limits of clarification instead. The procedure goes back to the point where the tender should have been excluded.

If the specifications allow equivalents, someone has to say they are equivalent

Supply of a street sweeper for Guadalix de la Sierra town council, 150,520 euros, three tenderers and only automatic criteria: price, delivery time and extended maintenance. The technical specifications set a maximum height without beacon of 1,990 mm, a maximum authorised mass of 4,500 kg and a minimum payload of 1,600 kg, which leaves a maximum unladen weight of 2,900. The awarded machine was 1,999 mm high and declared 3,800 kg unladen and 6,000 kg gross; registered at 4,500 kg, its payload would be 700. The council relied on the note in the specifications that those figures were “functional minimums” and that “equivalent or higher” solutions were accepted, and the successful tenderer filed a report on the strength of its axles with the challenge. The review body does not decide whether the machine is equivalent, that technical judgement is not its to make, but finds that the file held not a single report saying so: the committee applied the formulas and proposed the award. Where the specifications allow equivalence, it has to be demonstrated and technically reasoned before the award, and a party's report filed during the challenge does not replace the one the authority never produced. The challenge is upheld and the procedure goes back so that equivalence is documented and a technical report on the successful tender is issued.

Reserving leadership of the team for industrial engineers

Owner's engineering assistance for the waste treatment infrastructure of the Mancomunidad del Sur, including the planned La Marañosa environmental complex: an estimated value of 4.58 million euros over 36 months. Under technical ability (Article 90 LCSP), the procurement documents required the team's delegate to be an industrial engineer with twenty years' experience and the deputy an industrial engineer with ten. The professional body of civil engineers (Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos) challenged them, with standing because it defends the professional interests of those it represents rather than each member's own interests (TACRC Decision 645/2024). The review body upholds the challenge and annuls the clause. The justification report rested the requirement on experience, not on a degree, and demanding one specific qualification shuts out professionals from another branch with substantial experience on similar contracts. Absent a statutory reservation, the rule the Supreme Court applies to the technical professions governs (freedom with suitability, judgment of 22 April 2009): no field is exclusive in principle and the door stays open to any official qualification that provides the knowledge required. The authority supplied the final argument itself: its report on the challenge accepted civil engineers who were “functionally equivalent”, with the committee checking equivalence case by case, a broad reading the documents did not contain and which reinforces the conclusion. Only one company had tendered.

Awards and social media followers: the company is not the tender

Organisation of the 7th Occupational Health and Safety Congress of the Community of Madrid, tendered by the regional institute for health and safety at work with an estimated value of 313,177 euros. Two automatic criteria were worth forty of the hundred points: up to twenty for awards in health and safety or workplace wellbeing over the last five years (five for a national award, three for a regional one, one for a local or sector award) and twenty for a social media profile with more than ten thousand followers. A company in the sector challenged the procurement documents and then did not tender, and the review body grants it standing because the two criteria could cost it those forty points for reasons unrelated to its tender: the rule that only tenderers may challenge the documents gives way for someone kept out by the very clauses challenged. On the merits, both criteria are annulled. The justification report grounded the awards criterion in the company's “excellence, professional recognition and proven experience”, which describes the provider, not the quality of the service; under its Decisions 407/2022 and 516/2019, a company's track record cannot be scored as an award criterion (Article 145.5 and 6 LCSP). And follower counts are a pre-existing reputational asset: they measure no dissemination plan, no committed reach, no registrations. The review body adopts the alternative the applicant put forward: to secure publicity for the congress, the authority could have scored a plan with committed reach targets, a publication schedule, verifiable registration indicators and a media plan aimed at the health and safety audience. Experience only qualifies as an award criterion where it concerns the staff who will perform the contract and their quality significantly affects performance.

“Discounts above 25 % will not be accepted” does not allow exclusion without a hearing

Supply of uniforms and footwear for the local police and civil protection of Valdemoro town council, lot 1. Annex I to the procurement documents read: “Discounts above 25 % and delivery times below 10 days will not be accepted, as they are considered disproportionate and not in line with requirements”. The applicant offered more than 25 % and the committee excluded it without opening the other criteria or asking for an explanation. The council presented the rule as a saturation threshold and as an admissibility requirement nobody had challenged in time. The review body takes both arguments apart. A saturation threshold is a scoring formula that stops awarding points beyond a certain discount; it excludes nobody. And, decisively, clause 13 of the same documents, on abnormally low tenders, referred to that very section F of the annex for the abnormality parameters and required the Article 149 LCSP procedure to be followed. Read together, a discount above 25 % is the threshold for presuming a tender abnormally low, not an automatic ground for exclusion, and the documents bind the council as much as the tenderers. It adds that neither Directive 2014/24/EU nor the LCSP allows a tender to be rejected for its low price without first examining whether it is viable. The exclusion is annulled and the procedure goes back for the adversarial step. It has practical value: it avoids arguing that an unchallenged clause is void, because reading the documents as a whole is enough.

A draw before the tie-break criteria in the documents were exhausted

Supply of haemodynamics consumables for Hospital Universitario La Paz, lot 1, with two tenderers on exactly the same score. Clause 17 of the procurement documents set social tie-break criteria (staff with disabilities, social integration enterprises and sheltered employment centres, measures for equality between women and men), with priority for whoever met more than one and a closing rule: any remaining tie would go to the better score on the leading award criterion. The committee said it had applied them, left no record of how, and held a draw. Once challenged, the hospital conceded, admitting it had not applied all the criteria. The review body notes that in a special review a concession by the authority does not end the proceedings, and rules on the merits with two conclusions. Where the documents set tie-break criteria, Article 147.1 LCSP applies and the fallback criteria of Article 147.2, which the applicant wanted, do not. Nor does a draw, which the documents did not provide for: the clause 17 criteria, applied cumulatively and in order, were enough to break the tie. It also rejects annulling the whole procedure or abandoning it, as the successful tenderer proposed, since the defect can be cured by going back. Partly upheld: the procedure returns to the point where all the tie-break criteria in the documents are to be assessed, with reasons and documentary checks, and a draw expressly ruled out.

Thirty days from approval of the certificate, not sixty from the invoice

Energy-efficiency works on a multi-purpose public building in Cáceres. The contractor claimed €37,556.85 in late-payment interest and €520 in recovery costs from the regional government of Extremadura for thirteen progress certificates paid late. In court, the regional government argued that interest only starts to run sixty days after the invoice is registered, and that its own earlier calculation, made at thirty, had been wrong. The court applies Article 198.4 of the Public Sector Contracts Act as written, together with clause 23 of the procurement documents: the certificate is approved within thirty days of being issued and paid within thirty days of approval. If the invoice reaches the FACe e-invoicing platform within thirty days of approval, interest runs from thirty days after approval; if it arrives later, from thirty days after it was lodged. The rule is applied certificate by certificate, and the twelfth, paid on time, is left out. Partly upheld: interest on that basis, recovery costs for each invoice paid late, and statutory interest from the date of the administrative claim.

Judgment 458/2026 of the Extremadura High Court of Justice (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 1), 17 July 2026, ordinary proceedings 161/2026 · ECLI:ES:TSJEXT:2026:1001

The administration's internal complications do not stop the late-payment clock

Twenty-one invoices for cleaning and maintenance services paid late, and a claim for interest that the regional government of Extremadura never answered. The same chamber, on the same day as Judgment 458/2026, starts here from its own thirty-plus-thirty line (Judgment 3/2023 of 16 January): thirty days to approve the invoice from registration and another thirty to pay it. On that basis it excludes three invoices paid within sixty days; for the rest it accepts interest calculated from thirty days after the invoice was lodged, because there is no record that the administration ever approved them. What is worth keeping is how the court disposes of the excuses one by one: that several invoices were not addressed to the regional government, when all of them named it as customer; that one was tied to the performance guarantee, relying on a report that is not in the file; that the administration was waiting for a project amendment, when the proper course was to reject the invoice and ask for a new one; that later months' invoices were awaited; or that the service was provided in premises shared with the social security agencies, because «the internal complexities between administrations cannot prejudice the party concerned». Order to pay €19,634.63, with statutory interest from the filing of the court action under Article 1109 of the Civil Code; the argument that the debt was not liquid is rejected. The computation under Article 198.4 is pending before the Supreme Court, which in Order 7402/2026 of 15 July granted leave to decide whether the period is thirty days in total or thirty plus thirty.

Judgment 462/2026 of the Extremadura High Court of Justice (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 1), 17 July 2026, ordinary proceedings 653/2025 · ECLI:ES:TSJEXT:2026:1006

Three companies of one group, eighteen lots and not a single overlap

A contract for 450 places in the adult mental-health day hospital of the Valencian regional government, divided into eighteen lots with a cap of five lots per tenderer. Three companies of the same group shared out all eighteen without bidding for the same lot. The contracting authority excluded them under Article 139.3 of the Public Sector Contracts Act, the central review body (TACRC) upheld the exclusion in Decision 825/2025 of 29 May, and the court dismisses the action. The companies argued that each lot is a separate contract (Article 99.7), that bids for different lots do not compete and so cannot breach the one-tender rule; they added that the competition authority had ruled out a cartel under Article 1 of the Competition Act and that the authority, answering tenderers' questions, had accepted that group companies could bid. The court moves the debate elsewhere: what matters is not bidding for different lots but the sameness of the tenders. The same technical proposal in every lot, the same signatory, prices five euros apart, submission within an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half of each other, identical length and structure, even the same mistake in Annex II. Under the Court of Justice's judgment of 15 September 2022 (C-416/21) and Assitur (C-538/07), it is enough that the link between tenderers influenced the content of their tenders. The absence of a cartel, since a group lacks the plurality of undertakings, does not prevent exclusion under Article 139.3. The typeface is disregarded: the procurement documents prescribed it. Costs against the companies, which also sought damages of some €41 million.

Judgment 432/2026 of the Valencia High Court of Justice (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 5), 16 June 2026, action 355/2025 · ECLI:ES:TSJCV:2026:2153

Enhancements were offered for the contract term, not for a compulsory extension

Maintenance of the provincial road network of the Alicante provincial council, a 2016 contract for twenty-four months extendable to thirty-six. When it expired in November 2019, the council four times imposed continuation of the service «under the same terms», until May 2021, and kept deducting from the progress certificates the value of the enhancements the contractor had offered, since the procurement documents let it choose between having them carried out or collecting their value: €669,982.01. The first-instance court dismissed the claim because the contractor had not challenged the continuation orders and had not proved any loss. The High Court reverses. Enhancements are part of the contract, but they were priced for a term binding on both parties that the administration broke, using a power granted in the public interest and not to cover its own failure to plan the next contract. Once the contract has expired, they cannot be required during the compulsory continuation. The court relies on Supreme Court Judgment 1356/2025 of 27 October, on compulsory extensions with no maximum term, and Judgment 573/2026 of 6 May, for which «the same terms» bind the administration too. The contractor's objections to each order could be treated as administrative appeals (Article 115.2 of Law 39/2015), and the loss needs no further proof: the enhancements existed, their cost was not disputed and there was no obligation to provide them. Repayment of €669,982.01 with statutory interest, not late-payment interest, because this is not a contractual debt.

Judgment 436/2026 of the Valencia High Court of Justice (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 5), 16 June 2026, appeal 45/2026 · ECLI:ES:TSJCV:2026:2225

COVID in a car park that never closed: March, April and May are compensated

A works concession to build and operate an underground car park in Castelló de la Plana. The concessionaire sought €74,000 for lost revenue between March and 21 July 2020 under Article 34.4 of Royal Decree-Law 8/2020, and the first-instance court awarded it. The city council appealed on three grounds, all rejected. No prior request for a declaration that performance was impossible was needed. Partial suspension of a substantial part of the contract, here hourly parking, is enough even though the car park stayed open. And the requirement of a negative gross operating margin, applied in Supreme Court Judgment 1719/2023, comes from Article 25 of Royal Decree-Law 26/2020, which only covers toll motorways, first-generation dual carriageways and service areas awarded by the State. The appeal is nevertheless partly upheld: following its Judgment 655/2023 of 27 October, given for another car park run by the same concessionaire, the court limits compensation to March, April and May 2020, because from June onwards the drop in revenue does not show a substantial breakdown of the concession's economics. The amount follows the expert reports on file, with statutory interest from notification of the appeal judgment.

Judgment 445/2026 of the Valencia High Court of Justice (Contentious-Administrative Chamber, Section 5), 16 June 2026, appeal 106/2026 · ECLI:ES:TSJCV:2026:2410

Withdrawing from a contract that is still needed

Subscription to the InfoWorks licences Canal de Isabel II uses to model its water supply and sewerage networks: three years and an estimated value of 772,940 euros. The evaluation committee excluded one of the two tenderers and proposed the other for award, which then supplied the pre-award documents; the excluded tenderer challenged its exclusion, the review body dismissed that challenge in its Decision 103/2026 and lifted the suspension. Meanwhile the previous contract, which allowed no extension, had expired. The entity extended it by a year, the minimum period for which the software maker renews licences, and with the licence already paid for it decided not to award the new contract so as not to pay twice. The review body upholds the challenge and annuls that decision. The need has not gone away: without the software, hydraulic planning and the water supply itself are at risk, and extending the old contract proves the public interest in the service persists, so a one-year stopgap cannot justify cancelling a procedure designed to cover three. A decision not to award is regulated, subject to a time limit, a substantive limit and a formal one, and the vagueness of the public interest concept is no shelter for abuse: the reasons given must dispel any suspicion of misuse of power in favour of another competitor. Nor do the reasons invoked, the delay supposedly caused by the excluded tenderer's challenge, match the facts. The review body goes through the timeline (almost two months between opening the technical tenders and the scoring proposal, another month before the pre-award documents were requested) and concludes that the real cause was poor planning of the procurement. This is a utilities-sector contract, so the remedy is the claim under Royal Decree-law 3/2020 and the decision is tested against its Article 71, but the three limits are the same ones Article 152 LCSP applies. The procedure goes on.

It got its own price wrong: the tender falls, the penalty does not

Software as a service to manage staff subsistence and travel expenses at the Port Authority of Valencia, with a base budget of 92,686 euros. There was a single tenderer, which a week after submitting warned that for the ordinary service it had entered the amount for one year rather than for the full twenty-six months. The evaluation committee scored the tender as submitted (34,152 euros including VAT) and proposed it for award. When asked for the pre-award documents under Article 150.2 LCSP, the company replied that the contract was not viable at that price, and the contracting authority treated the tender as withdrawn and imposed the 3 % penalty on the base budget. The review body separates the two consequences. It confirms the withdrawal: a correctable clerical error is only one that is obvious, apparent from the document itself without interpretation, whereas here identifying it required the tenderer's later explanations and giving the tender a price other than the one stated, which amounts to changing it. The absence of other tenderers makes no difference, because the rule that tenders cannot be altered does not vary with the number of participants. And refusing to perform on grounds of economic unviability is a serious failure to comply with the request, not a defective compliance. The penalty, however, is annulled. Following its Plenary Decision 1474/2022 and Decision 710/2021, the 3 % requires intent or negligence and an individual assessment of the tenderer's conduct, and this company's conduct pointed the other way: it reported the error of its own accord, early and while the procedure was still open, and the unviability did not appear as a reaction to the request but had been flagged beforehand. For anyone who finds a mistake in a tender already submitted, the decision teaches two things: the mistake cannot be fixed, but raising it early may avoid the penalty.

Dropping a 40-million contract without giving reasons in the notice

Municipal waste collection, street cleaning and beach cleaning for the Sanxenxo town council, estimated at 40.4 million euros. While tenders were being scored, the council decided not to award the contract, “grounded in powerful reasons of public interest”, and in the same act opened proceedings to bring both services, under concession since 2000, back in house. In its report on the challenge it argued that the reasons were given by reference to a mayoral proposal and a report from the municipal comptroller. The Galician review body accepts reasons given by reference, but not like this: they were not incorporated into the decision, they were neither notified nor published, and the comptroller's report was not even mentioned, so it cannot be taken to have shaped the authority's will. It recalls Article 88.6 of Law 39/2015, under which reports only count as reasons when incorporated into the text of the decision, and applies Article 151.2 LCSP to the decision not to award: the notice must contain enough information to bring a properly reasoned challenge, a duty that extends to any act ending the procedure. The harm is plain from the fact that the applicant could not answer the public-interest reasons the council put forward later, because it did not know them. A decision not to award can be challenged, as the Court of Justice has held (cases C-92/00 and C-440/13), and although review is limited by the authority's discretion it necessarily turns on the reasons given. The review body does not rule on whether a public interest exists: it partly upholds the challenge and orders the decision to be notified and published again together with the documents that support it, reopening the time limit for a review.

Electronic fingerprint at 23:31, full tender sent by post

Anonymous design contest with a jury for the Pardo Bazán support home for older people in As Pontes, run by the Provincial Council of A Coruña. The rules required entries to be submitted solely by electronic means through the Public Sector Procurement Platform. One entrant obtained the electronic fingerprint receipt at 23:31 on the last day, could not upload the documents and wrote to the Platform's support desk, which replied that it had 24 hours and two options: complete the upload through the tool, or download the tender onto a USB stick and lodge it at the authority's registry or, as a last resort, at a post office. It chose the second, posted the tender within the 24 hours and notified the authority by email. The envelope reached the Provincial Council's registry four days after the deadline and the jury excluded it. The Galician review body upholds the challenge. Additional Provision Sixteen, paragraph 1.h) LCSP allows electronic tenders to be sent in two stages, and the entrant followed the Platform's instructions, which offered both routes with no order of preference; judged by the reasonably well-informed and normally diligent tenderer of the Court of Justice's eVigilo judgment, it did not depart from them. Nor was the tender late: if the Platform accepts lodging at a post office, it makes no sense to require the envelope to arrive that same day, and TACRC Decision 1479/2023 had already admitted a tender handed in to the national postal operator within the 24 hours. The review body adds a safeguard: the tender is admitted, but the authority must check what it received against the electronic fingerprint and confirm it complies with the rules, because the alternative route does not allow its content to change. The applicant's claim for damages is rejected.

If the awarded equipment may not meet the specifications, check it before installation

Supply of remote-controlled radiology units for hospitals in all seven Galician health areas, tendered by the Galician Health Service with an estimated value of 1,680,000 euros. The applicant argued that the awarded unit did not reach the table load capacity in motion required by the technical specifications: the tender stated 275 kg, a figure that also earned it top marks under that automatic award criterion, while the manufacturer's public documentation gave a different value. The successful tenderer replied that it is the manufacturer and that the review body cannot decide matters for the health regulator. The Galician review body starts from its settled position: what tenderers declare is presumed true, and the contracting authority need not verify every feature of every tender during the procedure, which would make procurement unworkable. That does not make it indifferent to what is offered, least of all when a third party calls it into question. The decisive factor was the authority's own technical report on the challenge, which found no breach yet proposed an on-site check, by way of audit or expert inspection, before installation: delivery means stopping and removing the units in use in seven hospitals, the equipment emits radiation, and discovering a breach afterwards would carry a high cost and a serious impact on patient care, with urological, digestive and gynaecological examinations to reschedule and longer waiting lists. The challenge is partly upheld: the award is annulled so that the technical check can take place and the outcome decided accordingly. It is a useful route when what the successful tenderer declared raises well-founded doubts but there is no conclusive proof of non-compliance.

Abandoning the procedure over outdated floor plans and a 3.99-euro mismatch

Full management of the Artistea artists' residence for Ponteareas town council, estimated at 198,312 euros. With tenders already in and one of the two tenderers excluded, the council discontinued the procedure because the floor plans annexed to the technical specifications did not reflect the building's current layout, and because the base budget appeared as 119,975 euros in one annex and 119,978.99 in another. Shortly afterwards it launched a new procedure with the same procurement documents and different plans. The only remaining tenderer challenged both, and the Galician review body joins and upholds the two challenges. Discontinuance under Article 152.4 LCSP is an abnormal way of ending a procedure, based solely on legality, which is read restrictively and requires the incurable breach to be identified and justified in the file. The decision cited no provision, and the review body does not allow the authority's report on the challenge to fill the gap by invoking Articles 116, 117, 122 and 124: what was not in the reasons did not shape the authority's will. On the merits, this is a cultural services contract, not works, the scored technical project did not depend on the interior layout, there was neither a technical report nor a proposal from the evaluation committee, and the new specifications match the old ones except for the plans. As for a 3.99-euro discrepancy justifying discontinuance, with tenders already submitted and unaffected by it, the point needs no further explanation. The procedure is reopened at the point before the decision and the second procedure is annulled, since two procedures with the same subject matter and funding cannot coexist (TACRC Decision 146/2026). Along the way, the review body confirms that discontinuance can be challenged even though it is not on the list in Article 44.2.

Two cents out of line, and the lot was declared void

Preventive, corrective and regulatory maintenance of the pathology, pharmacy and laboratory equipment of Bellvitge University Hospital, tendered by the Catalan Health Institute in sixteen lots. Only one undertaking bid for lot 12. The evaluation committee found that its breakdown by year and by item did not match the global figure by two cents (some years offered slightly more and others slightly less, cancelling out within the same performance period), proposed exclusion, and the contracting authority declared the lot void. The Catalan review body upholds the challenge, along a route worth reusing in any exclusion for formal defects in a tender. It first settles what was actually tendered: section 10 of the characteristics table sets the lot price as a global maximum amount and not as unit prices, the tender kept within that maximum, and it was never established that the annual or per-item figures were binding ceilings. Second, the discrepancy did not prevent the meaning of the tender from being understood, since it expressed a certain and determined amount, nor did it affect scoring, because the formula in annex 4 of the procurement documents takes the tender value as its only variable. Third, clause 19 allowed the authority to ask for an explanation of those divergences, which would have produced no amendment or clarification of the tender itself, merely the reason for the deviations. Citing the Court of Justice judgment of 21 December 2023 (C-66/2022) and Supreme Court judgment 523/2022 of 4 May, the relevance of a defect is measured by its effects in the light of the purpose of the rule; and exclusion is the ultima ratio of a tendering procedure. The procedure is reopened at the point immediately before the exclusion so that the clarification step is given.

Twelve points for being in Murcia, and the security certificate demanded of every consortium member

Specialist consultancy for the technical support office of an innovation procurement project of the Murcia Health Service, 60 % co-financed by ERDF funds. A challenge to the procurement documents, partly upheld, and read as a whole it is a catalogue of what may not be required. Down goes the award criterion that scored holding a National Security Framework (ENS) certificate: it rewards a pre-existing corporate attribute rather than an improvement built into the tender, it was never established that the contract falls within the scope of Royal Decree 311/2022, and, the review body recalls, ENS requirements must relate to the information systems used to perform the contract and not to the undertaking itself (Article 145(5) and (6) LCSP). By connection, so does the clause requiring every member of a group of economic operators to hold the ENS certificate and barring reliance on the capacities of other entities. Down goes the requirement of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 from every member of the group, contrary to Articles 69, 75 and 94(2) LCSP, because quality and environmental management certificates are not personal to their holder and may be shared between undertakings provided the contracting authority is told (Decisions 713/2018 and 765/2023, and plenary Decision 992/2024). And down goes ISO 14001 itself for want of reasons: invoking the DNSH principle shows neither a link to the subject-matter nor proportionality. The last two are local-establishment requirements (that the project consultants perform their tasks in the city of Murcia, and an award criterion handing out up to twelve points at one point per forty hours of on-site presence committed there), and with them the doctrine worth quoting in full: a local-establishment condition is discriminatory as a selection criterion and as an award criterion, and is admissible only as an undertaking to commit resources or as a performance condition, and then only if proportionate and linked to the subject-matter. Two grounds are dismissed, and they mark the boundary: requiring experience under the 2014-2020 FID line from both management profiles is proportionate because no project under the 2021-2027 line has yet finished and nobody could show such experience, and the team experience criterion subject to a value judgement is defined in sufficient detail. The partial annulment reopens the procedure at the point before the documents were approved, with the effects of Article 57(2) in fine LCSP.

The documents asked for 134 degrees and the stem had 135

Supply of hip prostheses for a Madrid university hospital, lot covering the uncemented bipolar prosthesis. The technical specifications required a stem with a “cervico-diaphyseal CCD angle of 134°” and the winning tender offered 135°, a fact all parties accepted. The medical service reported that one degree alters lateralisation by less than a millimetre and has no functional consequence for the patient, and the contracting authority invoked functionality and proportionality. The review body upholds the challenge: the procurement documents are the law of the contract and bind both sides (Article 139.1 LCSP), and this specification allows no modulation because it sets a precise magnitude. Had the authority believed other values met the functional need, it should have written a tolerance range into the specifications. Its argument that another lot of the same procedure called for 135° works against it: it shows each lot carries its own specifications. And the equivalent-solutions clause only operates where the documents name a commercial brand. The distinction worth keeping is the one the review body itself draws: some specifications do fall within technical discretion (a “reduced” lateral shoulder, “compatible” instruments) while others are either met or not. It annuls the award and orders the procedure reopened so the tender is excluded.

Excluding the only tenderer and declaring the procedure void: four grounds, none of them sound

Service for the collection, transport and deposit of bodies for post-mortem examination in the province of Seville. A single undertaking took part, scored 100 points and was proposed for award; when assessing the pre-award documentation under Article 150.2 LCSP, the committee found several defects, excluded it without granting any period to cure them, and the authority declared the procedure void. The review body first restates that declaring a procedure void is a closing act equivalent to the award for the purposes of the special review, and then upholds each ground. The company’s objects expressly covered funeral services: the statutory rider about acting as a “mere intermediary” applied only where the activity was of a professional nature, which the authority never established, and besides, the documents required no professional authorisation, reserved no critical tasks, and the ESPD declared that nothing would be subcontracted. On economic standing, the undertaking having been incorporated months earlier, Article 90 does not permit but obliges the authority to accept alternative means of proof, and it is the committee that must state in its request which documents it considers appropriate. As for the performance guarantee by retention from the price, one clause of the administrative documents allowed it and their annex forbade it: an internal contradiction in the documents cannot be turned against the tenderer who suffers it. The void declaration and the exclusion are annulled, with the procedure reopened so that the opportunity to cure, never given, is finally granted.

Describing the tenders is not giving reasons for the score

Services for the coordination and delivery of international tourism trade workshops, a lot awarded on 95.98 points against 92. The evaluation report went through the five criteria subject to a value judgement (venues, workshop activities, catering, graphic materials, sustainability) setting out the merits of both proposals. The review body annuls the award because describing is not giving reasons. It accepts that the case law requires neither an arithmetical breakdown of the score nor points attributed to each feature, but it does require the essential reasons for the technical preference to be made explicit: which of the elements described were decisive and what relative weight they carried, above all where the description presents the tenders as comparable and the numerical gap is significant. What is missing is not the facts but the bearing those facts had on the mark. It adds a limit that is seldom invoked: the technical committee may not create new sub-criteria, internal weightings or numerical scales that the documents did not provide for. It cites Articles 132, 145(4) and (5) and 150.1 LCSP and the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 14 July 2016, Case C-19/14. The remedy is surgical and worth requesting in those terms: back to the moment immediately before the evaluation report, preserving the scoring of the automatic criteria and the financial tenders already opened.

“Because it is homogeneous” is not a reason to leave a contract undivided

Procurement documents for a municipal contract to organise a bullfighting event, annulled in full on seven grounds. The first matters to any challenge against procurement documents: Article 99.3 LCSP makes division into lots the general rule and leaving a contract undivided the reasoned exception, and those reasons must be real, sufficient and available on the file. Here the justification report merely stated that “division into lots is not considered appropriate, given the homogeneity”, without specifying what made it technically unworkable to separate the supply of the animals, their transport, the medical team or the ambulances, nor why coordination could not be handled through contractual mechanisms. The valuable detail lies in the contrast: the review body accepts that in this contract the various services are harder to tell apart than in others it had examined, and still upholds the ground, because what is judged is not whether the subject-matter could be split but whether the file explains that it could not. The second useful ground concerns young undertakings: the documents must identify which specific means under Article 90 newly created undertakings may use to prove their standing. It is not enough for the authority to promise it will later accept any appropriate document, because legal certainty requires the regime to be known before the tender is prepared.

What the authority explains in its report cannot repair what the documents fail to say

Procurement documents for home respiratory therapy services of the Andalusian Health Service, annulled on a partial upholding. The contested criterion, “organisation of the undertaking at national and Andalusian level”, had been challenged as a preference for territorial roots, and the review body annuls it on a different ground that travels better to other cases: indeterminacy. The documents promised to assess the “sufficiency and adequacy” of the numerical list of professionals, terms that point to plain compliance with the minimum staffing the technical specifications already imposed, without clarifying whether what earned points was the excess over those minimums. The authority argued in its report that what was assessed was staffing above the statutory minimum, and there lies the heart of the reasoning: that explanation appears neither in the criterion nor in the justification report, which merely transcribed the criteria without justifying their choice, and what is argued in the review proceedings cannot supply what the tenderer needed to read when preparing its tender. Breach of Article 145(5)(b) and (c), which forbids unlimited freedom of choice, and of Article 116.4.

Rightly excluded, but the 3% penalty was not automatic

Media management services for the institutional advertising of the municipality of Muro de Alcoy. The tenderer proposed for award failed to prove its economic and financial standing as required by the procurement documents, neither when answering the request under Article 150.2 LCSP nor when correcting it, and the review body upholds the exclusion: no second opportunity to cure the same step may be granted, a line running from the Supreme Court judgments of 19 September and 17 October 2000 and repeated in the body’s own Decision 1060/2024. What it annuls is the penalty of 3% of the contract value. Under its plenary Decision 1474/2022, that penalty operates automatically only where the exclusion stems from a voluntary and unjustified withdrawal of the tender, from a self-exclusion scenario, from false documentation or from a total failure to answer the request; beyond those cases one must distinguish serious breach from defective compliance. Here the request was answered, if with insufficient documentation: enough to treat the tender as withdrawn and exclude, not to charge the 3% on top. Worth pleading the two grounds separately, because you can lose on the exclusion and win on the penalty.

The municipality picked the staff and the contractor merely signed the contracts

Municipal nursery school «El Paseo» in Valmojado, 102 places for children aged 0 to 3. The procurement documents required the contractor to hire «solely and exclusively» the people on a list pre-selected by the municipality itself, and in the order of call resulting from that process. The review body partly upholds the challenge and annuls those clauses. The distinction it draws is the usable one: requiring the staff assigned to the contract to hold certain qualifications, experience or suitability defines the what, leaving the undertaking free to choose within that frame; running a closed selection process, with candidates identified one by one, decides the who. In that second scenario the service contract stops being an autonomous supply of services and becomes an indirect vehicle for hiring staff, which is precisely what Article 308.2 LCSP forbids. It also rejects the analogy with the transfer-of-staff regime of Article 130: that regime is imposed where a statute or a collective agreement requires it, not by the drafter’s choice, and if such an obligation cannot be imposed without legal cover, still less can the hiring of named individuals. Nor does the clause pass the proportionality test, since the suitability of the staff can be secured through objective qualification requirements without closing the list.

A trade union may challenge the procurement documents, but only on what affects working conditions

Customer service office for the water utility of Lora del Río, estimated value €991,651.18. A trade union brought the challenge and the review body rules ground by ground. It rejects for lack of standing those attacking the reasoning on insufficient in-house means under Article 116.4(f) and the absence of the legal report of the municipal secretary under additional provision three.8, because Article 48 LCSP grants unions standing only where it may reasonably be inferred from the contested decision that the maintenance of working conditions is put at risk. It upholds the two grounds that did touch them: the salaries published in the transfer-of-staff information did not match those certified in the human resources report of 6 July, contrary to Article 130.1, and the contract value did not break down labour costs by gender even though the staff to be taken over are identified, as Article 100.2 requires. The remedies are measured just as finely: it does not annul the documents but orders them corrected with the same publicity they were given, and the tender deadline reopened in full. It also states something worth quoting when a ground of yours is rejected: rejecting a ground is not endorsing the content of the act.

Two tenders from one bidder had an answer in the documents; cancelling the whole procedure did not

Pest control and bird management services for the municipality of La Línea de la Concepción. One tenderer filed two proposals and the municipality withdrew from the entire procedure under Article 152.4 LCSP. The review body annuls the mayoral decree because the enabling condition is missing: withdrawal requires an incurable infringement of the rules on the preparation of the contract or of those governing the award procedure, and here the incident had an express answer in clause 15 of the documents themselves, which orders that none of the proposals signed by that tenderer be admitted. Where the documents provide the consequence, it cannot be replaced by early termination of the whole procedure. The reasoning also apportions responsibility: the e-procurement platform has a specific withdraw-tender function which the tenderer did not use, nor did it report any technical incident, which sets the case apart from Decision 476/2026, where the duplication came from an objective malfunction of the system. Matters are referred back to the point immediately before the withdrawal, so the authority may decide on those tenders under clause 15.

The documents were in the envelope; it was the download that failed

Works for the new health centre in Alhendín, Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital in Granada. The evaluation committee excluded a consortium for failing to submit the ESPD forms of its subcontractors. When reporting on the challenge, the contracting authority reviewed the electronic file and acknowledged that the documents had indeed been filed in envelope no. 1, and that what had happened was a technical error in downloading and processing the electronic documentation. The review body treats that acknowledgement as an admission of the claim and, in the absence of any specific rule in procurement legislation, applies Article 75.2 of the Administrative Jurisdiction Act: once the claim is admitted, the case is decided as sought unless doing so would manifestly infringe the law, which is not the case here. It annuls the exclusion and refers the matter back so that the tender is assessed on the full content of envelope 1. The takeaway is procedural rather than doctrinal: faced with an exclusion for documents you know you filed, the first move is to ask for the electronic file to be checked, before arguing the merits.

The documents said zero points and the committee applied exclusion instead

Infrastructure and management of shows and musical performances for the patron saint festivities of Maracena. The committee admitted the undertaking on the administrative envelope and, the same day and on a report from the municipal lawyer, excluded it for not offering the musical performances specified in the documents or any replacement for them. The review body upholds the challenge: those performances were set up as automatic quality award criteria, not as minimum admission requirements nor as essential requirements within the meaning of Article 149, and the documents themselves stated that the absence of proof of exclusivity «shall result in 0 points». The committee applied a consequence graver than the one provided for, and confused the purpose of award criteria, ranking valid tenders against each other, with that of admission requirements: deciding which tenders are valid. A tender scoring zero on quality still competes and may win on price, which is exactly what was at stake here. It annuls the exclusion and, with it, the award made eight days later, as an act flowing directly and inseparably from it.

A private ranking cannot be the yardstick for awarding points

Bullfighting event for the August fair of Aracena. The procurement documents required the matadors offered to be among the top ten of the ANOET ranking, a private league table with no official status, and firm letters of commitment from matadors and breeders to be filed with the tender. While the challenge was pending, the municipality amended the documents and removed both that ranking as a participation requirement and the certificate from the national bullfighting agreement committee, so on those two grounds the review body declares the challenge devoid of purpose and does not rule. But the ranking remained as the scoring method and the letters of commitment as the mandatory means of proving the matadors criterion, and there it upholds the challenge. Since the defects go to the very design of the award criteria, they cannot be cured by a saving interpretation nor by any later act of the evaluation committee: it annuls the documents and the acts approving them and refers the procedure back, with a fresh call for tenders if appropriate. The remaining grounds (the qualitative criteria, their weighting and the technical standing required) are dismissed.

A last-minute instruction cannot add requirements the procurement documents never set

Framework agreement for cleaning services of the Castile and León regional administration, León lot, twenty-two admitted undertakings. When inviting them to submit binding tenders for the call-offs, the contracting authority warned that the amounts for the complementary services, the paid hours pool and the pest-control items, had to match the request exactly. The applicant changed them, failed to correct this within the three days granted and was excluded. The review body partly upholds the challenge and rules that the condition cannot prevail: it was not in the framework agreement documents but in a re-published annex carrying a sentence added in red, and in an instruction of 4 May 2026 part of which it had already annulled in its Decision 98/2026. An authority running a call-off cannot insert restrictive conditions the governing documents did not provide for, and Article 222.1 LCSP forbids call-offs from making substantial modifications to the framework agreement. One fact weighed in the reasoning: different authorities were deciding the same point in different ways.

The procurement documents promised a technical report and nobody ever asked for one

Town-planning advisory services for the municipality of Cabanillas: two tenderers, 0.52 points apart. The documents stated that, since the evaluation committee had no members qualified in the subject matter, the technical reports underpinning the award proposal would be sought. The committee was reshuffled (because of workload, according to the decree itself) and the proposal was made without requesting any. In its Decision 13/2026 the review body had held that seeking reports is a power of the committee rather than a duty; here it qualifies that, where the members are not specialists, Article 228.2 of Regional Law 6/1990 on local government makes it mandatory, and the documents had incorporated it. It annuls the award and the whole procedure. Navarre decides under its Regional Law 2/2018 and calls this route a special claim, but the substance, the documents bind the authority that drafted them, is what every review body applies.

Requiring works certified by the architects’ association shuts out technical architects

The official association of technical architects of Navarre challenged the procurement documents for town-planning advisory services of the municipality of Ergoiena, and the review body agrees on the essentials. Two of the qualitative award criteria rewarded experience in work on vernacular architecture counting only project drafting or works supervision, and experience in works certified by the architects’ association, disregarding those certified by other professional bodies. They favour holders of an architecture degree over other professionals who could compete: they are discriminatory, and they fall together with the technical capacity requirement in clause 7. Two practical warnings. The managing unit’s report has to justify why those criteria were chosen, and here it merely said they concerned quality and price. And the review body annuls but does not redraft: the association asked it to set out the amendments and it replied that this exceeds its powers.

Conflict of interest: bad faith need not be proved, an objective overlap is enough

Framework agreement for technical documentation for public events, run by the Lanzarote emergency services consortium. A shareholder of the successful tenderer is a councillor and deputy mayor of the municipality of Tías, with responsibilities for town planning and municipal works and services; Tías is one of the consortium’s founding members and has a representative on its plenary and executive committee. The review body upholds the challenge and orders the exclusion, leaving the awards to the other two undertakings standing. What matters is the standard: an objective overlap and an apparent risk to impartiality suffice, with no need to establish collusion or bad faith, settled case law of the Court of Justice and the General Court, and the review body stresses that it is not judging anyone’s conduct. It also draws a distinction often blurred: the conflict of interest of Article 64 LCSP is far broader than the exclusion ground of Article 71.1.g), which is confined to family ties with the holders of the contracting authority.

The appeal succeeded on a ground the appellant never raised

The evaluation committee excluded the appellant from a services contract of the Comarca del Aranda because the work declared in its ESPD did not establish the technical and professional ability required: the procurement documents confined it to CPV 92521100-0, «museum exhibition services», while the contract covered a good deal more. On that point the tribunal sides with the contracting authority. It annuls the exclusion all the same, on a ground the company had never raised. Ability is declared in the administrative documentation, which may be put right, article 141 LCSP, and what article 140.4 requires is that the ability exist when the tender is submitted, not that it be perfectly evidenced first time round; excluding a tenderer without granting the three days for correction set out in the procurement documents themselves renders the decision voidable under article 40. The decision also annuls the second call for tenders the authority had launched in the meantime, and remits the procedure to the point before the exclusion.

Owning your plant outright does not justify an abnormally low tender

Resurfacing works under a municipal road programme. The tender fell within the presumption of abnormality and the economic operator explained it on two grounds: a full breakdown of unit prices, and plant costs below those in the project because the machinery is owned and already written down. The contracting authority answered point by point in two technical reports and maintained the exclusion. The tribunal upholds it, and the reason matters: it does not say the justification was weak, it says it will not substitute its own technical judgement for the authority's. Its review is confined to checking that the assessment is sufficiently and individually reasoned, and to correcting manifest error or arbitrariness. In practice, the case is won or lost in the written justification, not in the later appeal.

The box was left blank but the certificates were attached: the 26 points stand

An automatically assessed award criterion allocated up to 26 points for the qualifications of the project team, evidenced by professional certifications. The successful tenderer did not mention that criterion in the tender form, yet enclosed in the same envelope the eleven certificates the procurement documents required to be assessed. The appellant argued that without the express entry the criterion could not be scored. The tribunal turns the argument round: the procurement documents are the law of the contract, but a formal requirement is not an end in itself, it exists so that evaluation is transparent and equal for all. What is scored is what is evidenced, and here it was; no envelope was contaminated and no tenderer gained an advantage. The omission remains a formal defect.

They wrote «0 km» and then asked for it to be read as «under one kilometre»

A framework agreement for the supply of library stock to a city council's libraries, with an automatic criterion scoring the distance of the distribution point. Two appellants entered «0 km, as a whole number, not rounded» and, once they saw the ranking, asked for their real distance, under a kilometre, to be counted instead. The tribunal refuses: the procurement documents set no limit on decimals, other tenders stated 0.45 or 0.9770 km, so nothing stopped them from writing their true figure. Replacing it after the deadline would not be clarifying the tender but changing the input to the formula, with a direct effect on the ranking. Read it alongside Dec. 407/2026: there the label was missing and the substance was present; here the substance itself was missing. The decision also settles a point on standing in lots: a tenderer that bid only for lot 1 may challenge the award of that lot alone, even where it appeals jointly with another undertaking.

There is no second chance to cure a defect

The evaluation committee asked for two annexes to be cured. The economic operator filed one through the national procurement platform and the other by email, arguing that the second notice had vanished from the platform once the first was answered. It was excluded, and the tribunal upholds that on three grounds worth keeping in mind. The procedure was electronic, so email is not a valid channel even when the document arrives. A tenderer alleging that the platform malfunctioned must prove it, and an exchange of emails with the authority does not. And the three-day period to cure defects under article 141 LCSP is spent once used: no fresh period may be opened, since that would allow as many attempts as it takes to get it right. One detail stands out: the authority itself managed, using other tools, to verify that the document was signed by both parties, and the exclusion still holds, because the defect lay in the channel and in the signature the platform requires, not in the parties' intent.

A last-placed tenderer appeals only if the appeal can move it to first

An appeal against the award of a Ministry of Defence services contract, dismissed on the substance. The appellant had finished last, but claimed the maximum score on the automatically assessed criteria, which would have made it the successful tenderer: that is why the tribunal recognised its standing. The doctrine is demanding, a tenderer who could not win the contract even if the appeal succeeded has no legitimate interest, and it confirms that an award is adequately reasoned even when only the notice is published, provided the decision was notified and the evaluation minutes are on the record.

How far a clarification of a bid may go

Exclusion upheld in a services contract where the financial offer did not match the schedule of characteristics and certain cost items had been entered as zero. The tribunal took the opportunity to restate the limits on clarifications: they serve to explain what is already in the bid, not to complete it once the envelopes have been opened.

Excluded for omitting a photograph of the branded product

A furniture supply contract. The company was ruled out for failing to include in its technical bid a photograph of the chair and table bearing the screen-printed logo, as the procurement documents required. The tribunal dismissed the appeal. It serves as a warning: whatever the documents list as the content of the technical bid is applied to the letter, however minor it may appear.

Challenging the procurement documents without having bid requires more

Declared inadmissible in a works contract. The appellant had not taken part in the tender and did not establish that the clauses challenged were what prevented it from competing on equal terms. The procurement documents may be challenged without having submitted a bid, but it must be shown that those very clauses are what shut the company out, and that is best done in the appeal itself.

The security certificate must be held at the deadline, not at signature

A challenge to the procurement documents of a municipal graphic and multimedia design contract requiring certified conformity with the Spanish National Security Framework (ENS) at medium level. The appellant saw a contradiction in timing: the technical specifications referred to the successful tenderer and to the moment of signature, while the authority's answer to a query placed the requirement at the closing date for tenders. The appeal is dismissed, but the decision leaves three rules that travel well to any procurement with security requirements. ENS certification is not technical capacity but professional authorisation under article 65.2 LCSP, because it is imposed by law rather than by the procurement documents. Being an authorisation, it must be held when the tender deadline closes, article 140.4, even though documentary evidence of it is deferred to the tenderer proposed for award under article 150.2. And, above all, the technical specifications cannot override the administrative clauses on the rules of participation: they define the service, not who may take part.

Requiring offices in two provinces is not always a local-establishment clause

A services tender required authorisation to maintain offices in at least two provinces of Galicia. The appellant attacked it as a prohibited local-establishment requirement. The tribunal dismissed the appeal, holding it to be an administrative authorisation genuinely required by the activity rather than a disguised local presence condition.

One appeal may be partly inadmissible and dismissed as to the rest

A supply framework agreement. The tribunal declared two of the grounds inadmissible for want of standing and went on to examine the remainder, which it dismissed. Worth bearing in mind when drafting: each ground is assessed separately, so a poorly framed one does not drag the others down, but neither does it survive merely because the appeal as a whole is sound.

An «inadmissibility» the appellant actually won

The Granada College of Architects challenged the procurement documents of a Ministry of Defence contract that allotted 80 points to price and 20 to shortening the delivery period, without a single technical criterion, in a contract of an intellectual nature concerning a listed heritage building. Article 145.4 of the Act requires quality criteria to carry at least 51% of the marks there. Before the tribunal ruled, the contracting authority annulled the documents of its own accord and accepted that the appeal was well founded. The file is recorded as inadmissible for loss of subject matter: in the statistics it counts as an appeal not upheld, and yet the appellant obtained precisely what it had asked for.