A civil servant who managed to avoid turning up at his workplace for six years without his colleagues realising has been fined €27,000.
The engineer, Joaquín García (69), worked in the water department of Cádiz City Hall, in southern Spain. He took up the post in 2004, but in 2010 legal action was brought against him after it emerged that he had not been going to work, despite being paid.
The fine is the equivalent of Mr García’s annual net salary, the heaviest sanction that could be imposed on him for absenteeism.
"He had been given an office in the building of [public water company] Aguas de Cádiz and that was that," Jorge Blas, deputy mayor of Cádiz until 2015, told El Mundo newspaper. "Then one day, I remembered him and I thought 'whatever happened to that guy? Will he still be there? Has he retired? Has he died?'"
Mr Blas, of the conservative Popular Party, contacted the water company, who said they knew nothing about Mr García. The engineer’s office was opposite that of the director of Aguas de Cádiz, Aurelio Vélez, who had not seen him for years.
The deputy mayor finally tracked down the elusive civil servant. “I asked him: ‘What do you do? What did you do yesterday? And last month?’ He couldn’t answer me.”
Mr Blas said that City Hall had been about to give Mr García an award for 20 years of service when his case was discovered.
Mr García, who is now retired, denies the charge of absenteeism. A source close to the former civil servant told El Mundo that he did go to the office, "not from 8am to 3pm, but he went every day". However, they accept that he had no work to do, giving him time to read books on philosophy – particularly the works of Spinoza. He also got depressed, they said.
However, the version of events offered up by Mr García’s camp suggests that he spent not six years but up to 14 years essentially doing nothing. According to those close to him, he was appointed in 1996 to a post overseeing the operation of a sewage plant which was still years away from being built.
“There was no work to do,” said the same source, who added that the authorities knowingly gave him the phantom job, in order to “keep him out of the way”.
