With Palma's Palacio de Congresos convention centre and hotel all but ready to open once the lengthy tendering process for its management is completed, there remain one or two other unresolved issues. A key one has to do with the compensation demanded by the main contractor, Acciona, as a consequence of the lengthy delays in construction.
The president of the Palacio company, Palma's tourism councillor Joana Maria Adrover, revealed a document at Thursday's full council session which is apparently a 2014 agreement by the Partido Popular administration as then was with Acciona. Specifically, it states that the contractor will be paid 6.6 million euros compensation.
The PP has always denied that there was such an agreement. Alvaro Gijón, who was the president of the Palacio company when the PP was in power, reiterated this at the council session. But presented with the document by Adrover, he explained that it had been annexed to the minutes of a board meeting and had been withdrawn from the agenda. "It is the case that it was never approved," he said.
Adrover responded by observing that the current Palacio company had been led to believe that there was no written form of agreement. Suggestions that there might have been had, however, led to an "intensive" search, and the document in question was found very recently.