The Supreme Court has definitively ruled that the Council acted without justification in ending the contract and thereby making the tunnel free. The Council paid 16.2 million euros compensation, the company having demanded 31 million euros.
Globalvía's legal services spokesperson, José Felipe Gómez, hopes that an agreement can be reached and that the Council doesn't decide to initiate another dispute over the additional amount to be paid. He adds: "If there is no agreement, the amount will be set by the Palma court and its own expert report is very close to our demand and is very far from that of the Council."
Gómez says that it would not be possible for Globalvía to resume the management of the tunnel. "The concession ended in June 2022. If the Council were to decide to reintroduce the toll, it would have to call a new tender." He explains that if the Council had accepted a 2020 ruling that annulled the contract termination decision, it would have been possible to reach agreement on reintroduction as there were still two years left.
It was a coalition of PSOE, Més and Podemos that took the decision to end the toll and the contract - Miquel Ensenyat of Més was the president of the Council and Mercedes Garrido of PSOE the councillor for infrastructure at the time.
There is now a coalition of the right - the Partido Popular and Vox - and its representatives say that the tunnel will continue to be free. Having attacked the "grave irresponsibility" of PSOE and Més, the councillor for infrastructure, Fernando Rubio, said on Thursday that the Council will do everything it can to minimise the financial impact of the Supreme Court's ruling. "If they had waited five years, the cost would have been zero."
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The politicians couldn’t care less about how much is paid. It will come out of the taxpayer’s contribution’s to help maintain the island, or out of the tourist tax, paid by tourists, which no one really knows what it is for. Meanwhile, one of the two parties implicated in this mess, have managed to get their leader elected as speaker of the House and the other has a member elected to a party which is holding the sitting President, and the country, to ransom. Both at excellent salaries. Maybe they will contribute some of these to wards the cost as well. Maybe.