Senior Fuerteventura council official demands State restore extra pay for all public employees
AN OFFICIAL REQUESTS THE FULL RESTORATION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY PAYMENTS FOR ALL PUBLIC EMPLOYEES
“The crisis is over, the cut is not”: the official demands the full repayment of extra payments and warns of a flood of lawsuits.
A senior official has launched a direct accusation against the State: for more than fifteen years it has been covertly maintaining a salary cut that originated as an exceptional measure and, according to him, now lacks any legal justification.
Miguel Ángel Socorro Perdomo, Head of the Budget Management Service of the Fuerteventura Island Council, has filed a formal request with the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service demanding something as concrete as explosive: the total restitution of extraordinary payments for public employees and the repayment of all amounts that were improperly reduced and not prescribed.
His thesis is clear: the Royal Decree‑Law approved during the economic crisis was an emergency measure, but its effect lives on today in public payrolls, turned—he alleges—into a structural cut disguised as normality.
“An arbitrary practice sustained over time”
The document raises its tone and points to possible constitutional violations. It speaks not only of injustice but of arbitrariness: maintaining a salary reduction without a current cause, he asserts, breaks basic principles such as legal certainty, proportionality and legitimate trust.
In essence, the accusation is serious: the State would be solidifying, through practice, a permanent salary reduction that was never formally approved as such.
Meanwhile, extraordinary payments—legally supposed to equal a full month’s salary—still fall short of that level, which, for the claimant, is the clearest proof that the 2010 cut has never been fully dismantled.
A multi‑million‑euro bill at stake
The offensive does not remain symbolic. The official demands retroactive repayment of the amounts “improperly deducted” over the years, with interest. If successful, the economic impact could be enormous and open an unexpected front for public finances.
But the move goes beyond money: it introduces the risk of a domino effect. If other public employees follow suit, the claim could multiply nationwide.
Direct warning: from the Administration to the courts
The message to the Government is almost an ultimatum. Three months: that is the deadline the Administration has to respond. If it does not—or if it replies without addressing the substance—the case will jump straight to the courts for violating a fundamental right.
The filing itself makes the strategy clear: exhaust the administrative route to trigger immediate judicial actions, including contentious‑administrative appeals and claims for State liability.
The return of the salary conflict
The initiative reopens an uncomfortable debate that was never fully closed: to what extent are the crisis‑era cuts still embedded in the public remuneration system.
For years, governments have defended that the situation is now normalized. This case directly challenges that narrative and raises an uncomfortable idea: that part of the 2010 austerity not only survived but quietly solidified.
And now, for the first time in a long while, someone has decided to take that suspicion to its ultimate conclusion.