Court voids Puerto del Rosario council exam board for breaching gender parity

The Contentious‑Administrative Court No. 5 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has fully upheld the appeal filed by Intersindical Canaria against the Puerto del Rosario City Council and has declared the nullity of the composition of the Qualifying Tribunal of the selective process convened to fill, on an open‑competition basis, four positions of General Administration Technician.

No parity in the Qualifying Tribunal

The judgment, dated 16 April 2026, affects the municipal resolution published in the Official Gazette of the Province of Las Palmas on 13 February, which approved the final list of admitted and excluded applicants, the date, place and time of the first exercise of the opposition phase, and the composition of the tribunal.

The ruling does not annul the list of applicants, but it does require the City Council to revert the procedure to the point of determining the composition of the Qualifying Tribunal. The nullity is declared, according to the judgment itself, “exclusively concerning the composition of the Qualifying Tribunal”, as well as regarding subsequent acts issued in execution of the contested act.

The basis of the judicial pronouncement lies in the failure to comply with the principle of balanced representation between women and men.

The City Council argued that parity was met if only the voting members of the tribunal were taken into account, excluding the secretary.

However, the court rejects that interpretation and warns that “this is a device deployed by the Administration”, as there is no legal provision allowing parity to be calculated only on a portion of the body’s members.

The judicial decision reminds that a balanced composition **is not a recommendation nor a goal subject to each administration’s discretion, but a legal requirement.

The judgment also imposes costs on the Puerto del Rosario City Council, albeit capped at a maximum of €500, considering the amount, the complexity of the procedure, and the fact that no hearing was held.

Although the decision does not invalidate the list of applicants, it does nullify the tribunal’s composition and obliges the council to redo that part of the procedure before proceeding with the opposition.

The judicial decision reminds that a balanced composition is not a recommendation nor a goal subject to each administration’s discretion, but a legal requirement.

Reactions

Fuerteventura Avanza has issued a statement demanding “immediate” explanations following the judicial annulment of selection processes and warns of a Personnel management “turned into an institutional scandal”.

The organization calls for a full audit of the calls launched during this term.

Its spokesperson in Puerto del Rosario, Peña Armas, warns that the situation “has ceased to be a chain of errors and has become an alarming pattern that calls into question the cleanliness and credibility of municipal examinations.”

In the same vein, she denounces that “when Justice overturns selection processes, when courts demand explanations and when candidates go to the Prosecutor’s Office, we are no longer talking about administrative incidents.”

Armas accuses the governing group of acting “with haste, improvisation and a worrying temptation to control procedures that must be absolutely clean and independent” and emphasizes that “public employment cannot be used as a political tool nor as an electoral currency.”

“Public positions belong to all residents, not to the governing group,” the spokesperson concludes.