The Civil Guard points to preferential treatment for Barrabés in Red.es contracts

Published on June 28, 2026 | Translated from Spanish

The Civil Guard has detected irregularities in the contracts that Red.es awarded to businessman Barrabés. According to the report, scores and evaluation criteria were modified to favor his bids. For citizens, this reveals a possible arbitrary management of public money, where private interest was prioritized over seeking the most efficient option for everyone.

forensic audit of government contracts, officials adjusting scoring criteria on a digital tablet while redacted documents float in mid-air, a balance scale tilted with a heavy gold coin on one side and a stack of official seals on the other, glowing red flags marking manipulated data points on a transparent screen, technical illustration style, cold blue and grey metallic tones, sharp focus on the tablet showing a bar graph with uneven bars, scattered paper clips and broken pens on a dark wooden desk, cinematic lighting casting long shadows, photorealistic engineering visualization

How the manipulation of technical criteria affects public procurement 🔍

In bidding processes, evaluation criteria define which offer is the most advantageous. If scores are altered arbitrarily, fair competition is broken. This means that, instead of selecting the best technical or economic proposal, a specific supplier can be favored. In the case of Red.es, the modification of these technical parameters would have benefited Barrabés, distorting the principle of transparency in public procurement.

The art of adding points where there are none 🎲

It seems that at Red.es they had a special calculator. If a bid did not reach the cut-off score, the exam could always be changed. It is like playing Parcheesi and moving your piece to the finish line while others roll the dice. The curious thing is that, for citizens, the result is the same: everyone's money goes down a drain of flexible criteria and elastic scores.