The Subsecretariat of Foreign Affairs, European Union, and Cooperation of Spain awarded a contract worth 1,131,295.68 euros to Grupo Palco —a Cuban state enterprise subordinate to the Council of Ministers— on December 12, 2024, to supply personnel to the Consulate General of Spain in Havana, according to the 2024SWs00114 file from the Public Sector Contracting Platform.
The procedure used was the restricted one, with manual submission of bids. Only one proposal was received —that of Palco— and the award criterion was singular: the price, with a weighting of 100%. The awarded amount exactly matches the base budget, indicating that there was no reduction at all.
The official motivation stated in the award announcement allows no room for interpretation: "Economic offer received from Grupo PALCO, the sole state-owned provider of personnel."
This formula reflects a structural reality: Cuban legislation prohibits foreign diplomatic missions from hiring local workers directly and requires them to do so through entities authorized by the State. Palco is designated for this purpose, which effectively makes it a monopoly for supplying personnel to embassies and consulates on the island.
The contract, identified with the CPV codes 79621000 (provision of office personnel) and 79622000 (provision of domestic personnel), came into effect on January 1, 2025, and will extend until December 31, 2028. The awardee's address is 60th Street, number 505, between 5th and 5th A, in the Miramar neighborhood, Playa, Havana.
The award and formalization announcements were published on the platform on March 5, 2025, more than two months after the contract was signed. The PDF of the signed document—titled “Contrato de Suministro Empleadora PALCO firmado.pdf”—is available in the “Formalización” section of the file.
This contract is the largest of the three that the Foreign Affairs Ministry has formalized with Palco. The second, file 2024SWs00113, amounts to 242,743.48 euros and covers the provision of personnel to the Embassy of Spain in Havana; a third contract, for office leasing, totals approximately 228,000 euros. In total, the three contracts reach 1,602,217 euros, a figure that the Popular Party has used as a reference in its parliamentary claims to demand the appearance of Minister José Manuel Albares before the plenary session of Congress.
The trigger for the hiring was the overwhelming number of nationality applications submitted under the Memory of Democracy Law, whose deadline closed on October 22, 2025. The Spanish Consulate General in Havana accumulated over 350,000 files related to this route to nationality, which overwhelmed the consular office and led to the hiring of external support through Palco. The documentation of the main contract estimates the number of employees added to the Consulate at approximately 88; including the second file, various reports raise the total figure to about 107 workers.
Palco has also been linked to investigations for alleged corruption. In October 2024, Yoel Perdomo Di-Lella —brother of then Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo Di-Lella— and other executives related to the company were questioned for alleged corruption, currency trafficking and tax fraud, just days before the dismissal of the Deputy Prime Minister.
How to consult the file: anyone can access the complete documentation at contrataciondelestado.es by going to "Bids," selecting "Search by form," and entering the code 2024SWs00114 in the "File" field. The award notice, the formalization notice, and the signed contract are available there in PDF format.
The Grandchildren's Law returns to the center of the political debate in Spain as the PP continues its parliamentary pressure and demands a legal report from the General State Counsel on the legality of outsourcing consular duties to a company outside the Spanish Administration.
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