Canet d'en Berenguer to penalise Acciona over missed summer rubbish collection reinforcement
Canet d'en Berenguer, a neighbour of Sagunto in the Camp de Morvedre district, will penalise Acciona for not covering the summer rubbish reinforcement. The council will deduct the days not worked from the more than €9,000 agreed.
Canet d'en Berenguer will deduct part of the money the council set aside to reinforce rubbish collection in the summer of 2026 from Acciona, the waste collection contractor. The reason is that the extra service was not delivered in full: the two additional weekly runs to clean the bins never took place.
The deal was agreed in late July. The council committed more than €9,000 to expand the collection team until September, from four to seven people, with two labourers and one driver joining.
The labourers started work and spent their time picking up bags left outside the bins. The driver, however, went on sick leave two days after starting, and the contractor did not put anyone in his place. Without a driver, the planned cleaning of the bins was left undone.
The council has now asked Acciona to state how many working days went uncovered. That count will be used to work out the amount to be subtracted from the more than €9,000 agreed; the final figure is not yet known.
The mayor, Pere Antoni, says the local government decided to step in this summer because residents were complaining. He adds that the council had run campaigns on the correct use of the bins and had enlarged the collection point at the ecopark (the municipal recycling site). In his view, the company's failure affects more than the town's image in high season: residents have a right to live in a clean environment.
The weight of tourism explains why the issue is so sensitive. Canet d'en Berenguer has about 8,300 inhabitants (INE 2025) and its main activity is tourism, with the Racó de Mar beach as its main attraction. In periods of heavy visitor numbers, waste collection is among the services that generate the most complaints.
It is not the first penalty. In April 2025, the council plenary session approved a €235,125 fine on Acciona, the maximum amount the contract allowed, for shortcomings during the previous summer. The council concluded at the time that those failures damaged the town's tourist image and that the company's corrective measures were not enough.
The dispute coincides with the end of the waste collection contract, signed in 2016. The council will extend it by one year while it drafts the terms of a new tender, open to any company, including the current contractor. With that contract it wants to improve the collection service.
The exact amount of the deduction and the timetable for the tender remain unknown, as the available information does not specify them. According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional data from Wikipedia on Canet d'en Berenguer.