Aspiring firefighters accuse Palma City Council of irregularities in the competitive examinations

PalmA group of 16 applicants for the selection process to fill 26 firefighter/driver positions with the Palma City Council have publicly denounced an "absolute lack of transparency," repeated failure to meet deadlines, and a "total absence of planning" in a competitive examination that, they explain, has been dragging on for more than two years. The applicants assert that the process directly violates the doctrine established by the Supreme Court in a January 2022 ruling, which stipulates that the evaluation and grading criteria for selection tests must be defined and published before they are administered, as a guarantee of the principles of equality and merit. They point out that the same ruling warns that the lack of these criteria constitutes a "substantial flaw" that can lead to the test being declared null and void. In this regard, the applicants denounce the fact that the grading criteria for the psychometric and personality tests were never published. They also claim that the examining board itself announced in writing, in a pre-test proceeding, that these criteria and cut-off scores would be communicated before the start of the exercises, information which, they maintain, "was never provided."

Without knowing the rules of the game

According to the group, this non-compliance "exacerbates the lack of transparency" and reinforces the violation of the Supreme Court's doctrine, since the applicants took elimination tests "without knowing the evaluation rules." They also denounce that the tribunal issued clarifications about the personal interview after many candidates had already completed it, which, in their opinion, amounted to "altering the rules of the game once the evaluation had begun." The applicants recall that this is not the first time this legal requirement has been applied to the Palma Fire Department. They cite a 2022 ruling by the Administrative Court No. 3 of Palma that forced the City Council to repeat psychometric tests because the correction criteria had not been published beforehand. In that case, they explain, the affected applicant ended up being declared "fit" and is currently an active firefighter.

They also compare the process to other recent competitive examinations, such as the unified Local Police recruitment process, where, they indicate, "up to 14 pages of evaluation criteria" were published, which, in their opinion, demonstrates that publishing them "is not only mandatory, but perfectly possible."

Regarding the psychometric tests, they denounce that the personality test and the personal interview were conducted nearly a year apart, which, they maintain, "prevents the test from being considered technically valid." However, they state that the panel used both results to issue a final rating of "unsuitable," without justifying its reliability or providing individualized justification. This lack of information, they assert, prevented them from effectively filing appeals and placed them in a situation of "material defenselessness."

The 16 applicants explain that, despite being deemed unfit, they continued taking other tests—physical, skills, and phobia tests—which they passed successfully, at considerable economic, physical, and emotional cost. They claim that the official notification of their "suitability" status arrived more than a year late, and when they asked the professionals responsible for the psychological evaluation for an explanation, they were told that scheduling was not within their purview.

Without clear dates

More than two years after the publication of the rules, the process continues, according to them, "without a clear timeline or coherent planning," with constant changes and decisions that arrive late and generate "serious legal uncertainty." They add that they have suffered personal and professional harm from having to live for years in a state of uncertainty that has prevented them from planning their future careers or preparing for other competitive examinations. Given this situation, the applicants are demanding the immediate publication of the evaluation criteria, which they say were announced but never provided, as well as the retaking of the tests with all legal guarantees. They assert that they are not questioning "the rigor or the requirements" of the selection process, but rather "the failure to comply with the basic rules of transparency and publicity," and they regret having been forced to resort to legal action to correct an error that, in their opinion, could be rectified administratively. The applicants describe the situation as one of "bewilderment, powerlessness, and exhaustion," and question why they must resort to the courts when "the law is clear." They warn that a possible favorable ruling in three or four years would not compensate for the personal, professional, and emotional damage that they already consider irreversible.