Canet d'en Berenguer: criminal complaint over a C1 to A1 promotion reaches Sagunto court
The Sagunto court, which serves the Camp de Morvedre district, has received a complaint over a Canet d'en Berenguer civil servant's move from grade C1 to A1. The town hall says the process was lawful.
A civil servant at Canet d'en Berenguer town hall (a municipality in the Camp de Morvedre district) who rose from grade C1 to A1, with the appointment published in 2023, is the subject of a criminal complaint filed at the Sagunto court. One person who says they were harmed filed it with the Civil and Investigating Section of the Tribunal de Instancia (court of first instance). The offences named are administrative malfeasance (prevaricación) and unlawful appointment, still only alleged: the court has found no signs of a crime and nobody has the status of formal suspect.
The facts start in 2022, when the town hall approved an internal call to fill a General Administration technician post (TAG, subgroup A1). Only one candidate was admitted, from C1, and he won the post without ever having held an A2 position. That omission underpins much of the filing. The Diari Oficial de la Generalitat Valenciana (the regional official gazette) published the appointment in March 2023, and the complaint adds that the official later moved to a post at the Government Sub-delegation in Valencia. That link needs documentary proof, since happening at around the same time does not show a cause.
The law sets rules for such cases. Under the Basic Statute of Public Employees, vertical internal promotion is a move from a body or scale of one subgroup to the one above. To apply, an official must meet the entry requirements, pass the tests and have at least two years of active service in the lower subgroup. The filing argues that skipping A2 contradicts that regulation and the courts' case law on access to certain bodies and scales.
According to the complaint's account, the checks had already gone off: the Agencia Valenciana Antifraude (AVAF, the Valencian anti-fraud agency) warned of possible nullity by operation of law of the call's terms and of the admission, and asked the town hall to review it of its own accord. The process was completed anyway. The complainant wants to know why the municipal government carried on and whether it did so knowingly. It also asks for an inquiry into ties between the mayor and the official: they shared a political project and sat together on the board of the municipal company GESCANET, S. L. The text itself admits that such closeness is not a crime on its own.
This is not the first time the case has interested prosecutors. As El Español reported in March 2026, the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Valencia had opened a criminal investigation. It reported that Antifraude does not accept a direct jump (per saltum) from C1 to A1 and that the promotion should have been to A2, and that the town hall replied it was a disagreement over interpretation and reviewed nothing. Vozpópuli, on the same day, placed Antifraude's ruling on nullity in December 2022 and said prosecutors asked for the whole file.
The court is asked to bring in the complete file with its electronic record, to reconstruct who took part and on what dates; to review the minutes of the selection panel, the call's terms, resolutions and data on GESCANET; and to take whatever statements it sees fit.
The complainant's name has not been disclosed. The complaint relies on Directive (EU) 2019/1937 and Law 2/2023, which brings that directive into Spanish law to protect people who report breaches, and whose article 19.2 bars passing their identity to those affected. How it fits this case will depend on the circumstances; nothing has been decided.
From Canet town hall the reading is the opposite. Its sources speak of maximum calm, a procedure within the law and a complaint going nowhere, and suspect that behind it is a former business partner of the former municipal secretary, convicted of bribery, who would want to collect a debt; the text offers no data to back this up. They also mention a recent ruling of Administrative Court no. 10 of the Tribunal de Instancia of Valencia, not appealed, which declined to annul the terms, as a participant in the selection had asked, without examining the substance. And they say the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office opened an inquiry in September, with up to nine months to decide whether to file a complaint. That timeline clashes with El Español's, which in March spoke of the Provincial Prosecutor's Office, so each point is attributed to whoever gave it.
It remains to be seen whether the court admits the complaint and what steps it orders. Until then, what is described are allegations in a filing, and everyone named keeps the presumption of innocence.
According to El Periódico de Aquí, with data from the BOE (Spain's official gazette) on the Basic Statute of Public Employees and Law 2/2023, and from El Español and Vozpópuli.