The Madrid Provincial Prosecutor’s Office denounced four employees of the Majadahonda town hall for alleged irregularities that occurred during competitions for two municipal architect positions. The results of the exam, which took place on May 7, were so extreme that only two people passed and they did so with scores above nine, while among the other 94 candidates, none of them scored more than four points. The huge disparity between the scores sounded the alarm and prompted five affected parties to file a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office, which has now been successful, as reported by Cadena SER.
The complaint is directed against the president of the selection court, Rafael Emilio Lleonart Torant; the secretary of said council, Antonio Rosón Fernández; the director of human resources and deputy secretary of the court, Yolanda Mosquera Ambite; and the substitute president, José Antonio Sánchez del Toro, all employees of the Majadahonda City Council, accused of the crime of infidelity in the custody of documents. The prosecutor’s document, to which this newspaper had access, indicates that these four people “could have given information on the questions of the first test-type exercise to the only two people who passed it”.
The prosecution extends the complaint to these two candidates, for the offense of abuse of privileged information. One of the facts that first raised alarm among the disapproved opponents was that one of these people was already working at the Majadahonda City Hall at the time of taking the test, a fact that has now been confirmed by the administration itself to this newspaper, which clarifies that it belongs to the category of acting civil servants.
The Consistory – which, in response to the first complaints, refused to make statements because, it assured, it was a matter unrelated to politics – defends that both were “provisionally approved” and that the court, now denounced, “has not yet resolved the allegations of the applicants”. A spokesperson indicated that above all they had “the greatest respect” for the acts of justice and the actions taken by the applicants involved in the process, but that, in this regard, they also valued “the principle of presumption of innocence of all those who could be the subject of an investigation”. The four court defendants, confirms an administration spokesperson, are currently working normally in their positions “since they are public officials”. In addition, he emphasizes that they have not yet received notification of the complaint from the judicial or tax authorities.
The prosecution’s investigation determined that the exam was 95% prepared by the president of the opposition court, “who prepared the 80 questions plus the five alternatives and proposed them to the rest” of the people around the table, “even though they should have done them together.” The writing specifies that Lleonart only added three exercises proposed by his colleagues. “The questions were on the president’s computer and in an external memory which was in his possession when he brought them to the first session of the court,” he adds.
The president, appointed to this position on March 13, 2025, according to the document, admitted to the rest of the members that he had already prepared the questions several months before his appointment as head of the process. The Prosecutor’s Office emphasizes that it cannot be proven that the examination – which should have taken place before the date on which it was actually carried out, but was postponed due to the major power outage that the entire country suffered – was properly monitored by those responsible.
He acknowledges that the selection process “was not as orthodox” as it should be. Not only did the results attract the attention of candidates, but the manner in which the exam itself was conducted was surrounded by alleged irregularities. Several candidates denounced to this newspaper the absence of a reliable system to anonymize the exams, as is usually the case in matters of selectivity so that the court cannot identify who owns each answer sheet. These pages and the one containing the personal data were linked by a staple, they said, and so they thought that anyone could have modified them without much problem, in addition to knowing the name of the person who had done it.
The scores were so abysmal that seven of the 96 candidates scored zero points, while the third highest scorer scored a 4.57. However, the top two managed with 9.01 and 9.63 respectively.
Several of the people involved with whom this newspaper spoke had already taken part in other similar exams, so they were very familiar with the program and the methods, and therefore did not consider it normal that any of them were able to obtain at least a pass. “We, the complainants, will go to the end,” specifies Daniel Sanz, one of the candidates who presented himself, who wants this to “serve as a warning to navigators in other processes”.
The PSOE of Majadahonda, which presented an appeal in May after learning of the results of the selection process, expressed its “concern” upon hearing the news of the complaint of the four officials involved. “A result as strange as that of Majadahonda could call into question whether the exam proposed as the first qualifying test guaranteed that all candidates could demonstrate their knowledge in a reliable evaluation process and that alleged irregularities could have been committed during the process,” commented socialist councilor David Rodríguez Cabrera. “It would be necessary to analyze whether the questions were clear and adapted to the objective of the test, whether the level of difficulty was reasonable and whether the duration was adequate,” he adds.
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