Members of the Canary Islands Government, led by the Canarian Coalition and the Popular Party, have collected 3.7 million euros in daily allowances so far during this legislature. Fernando Clavijo’s executive has doubled travel and maintenance expenses in two years compared to the previous government, made up of the PSOE, Podemos, Nueva Canarias and the Agrupación Socialista Gomera (ASG), whose members received 1.9 million euros in service allowances during the same period, which includes travel, subsistence and transport allowances.
The departments that wasted the most during the first two years of the legislature (from summer 2023 to summer 2025, latest updated data) are the Presidency, with 606,000 euros; the Ministry of Tourism and Employment, with 410,000 euros; the Ministry of Social Protection, Equality, Youth, Children and Families, with 355,000 euros, and the Ministry of Public Works, Housing and Mobility, with 316,000 euros. In the case of Tourism, in the first half of 2025, spending on international fairs was published for the first time, representing a total cost of almost 20,000 euros between Fitur and Berlin.
The President of the Canary Islands Government, Fernando Clavijo (CC), has received 75,698.15 euros in compensation so far during this term, which is 14,146.44 euros less than what former President Ángel Víctor Torres spent during the same period (from summer 2021 to summer 2023). For his part, Vice President Manuel Domínguez (PP) received 50,702.72 euros for this concept, more than double that of former Vice President Román Rodríguez (22,597.57).
Among the councilors who make up the Regional Executive, Jéssica de León, responsible for Tourism, is the one who spent the most on travel and accommodation allowances, with 85,327.26 euros. He is followed by the Minister of Public Works, Pablo Rodríguez (69,238.86 euros), and the head of the university sector, Migdalia Machín (62,925.09 euros). On the contrary, the three councilors who spent the least money on travel and maintenance are the head of Territorial Policy, Manuel Miranda (35,269 euros); the Minister of Education, Poli Suárez (33,094.36), and the Minister of Finance, Matilde Asián (18,106.32).
The Ecological Transition Advisor, the one who travels the most
Of all the senior officials of the Canary Islands government, the one who earned the most money in daily allowances is Horacio Umpiérrez, Deputy Minister of Culture and Cultural Heritage, with 93,455.35 euros for 67 trips, which are added to the 78,011.88 euros in salary he earns per year. In second place is the Director General of European Affairs, Celia Alberto Pérez, with 85,977.81 euros for 83 trips. They are followed by the Minister of Tourism, Jéssica de León (85,327.26 euros); the president of the Regional Executive, Fernando Clavijo (75,689.15), and the Minister of Public Works, Pablo Rodríguez (69,238.86).
The Ecological Transition Advisor is the one who traveled the most over these two years, during which he made 353 trips. The president of the Canary Islands has traveled almost a hundred times less than Hernández Zapata, with 260 trips, seven more than the head of territorial policy, who has made 253 so far this mandate. Once again, the one who spent the least in this regard is the Minister of the Treasury, who between the summer of 2023 and 2025 traveled 56 times.
Among the directors general, the number of trips of Onán Cruz, director of Territorial Planning and Territorial Cohesion, is surprising, with 337 trips. Also that of Mónica Gómez Curiel (counsellor to the Cabildo de La Palma since October of this year), who, as director of Water, traveled 317 times. They are followed by the general director of Costas, Antonio Acosta, with 296 trips; the director of Energy, Alberto Hernández, with 257 trips, and the director of Natural Spaces and Biodiversity, Miguel Ángel Morcuende, with 249 trips.
A key order
Spending on compensation has increased significantly since the regional government updated the maximum amounts for senior civil servants and other public officials in a decree at the end of 2023. The maximum amount for housing increased from 102.56 euros to 166.25 euros for the former, remained at 53.34 euros for maintenance, and the rate for the use of a private vehicle increased from 0.19 euros per kilometer to 0.26. This latest increase was applied retroactively for travel from July 18, 2023.
But that’s not all. The previous order, dating from 2006, established a supplement of 50 euros on the maximum amount of accommodation in the cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Seville to “guarantee coverage of living costs”. In addition, since the end of 2023, it has been extended to all cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants (Valencia, Zaragoza and Malaga) as well as to San Sebastián and Palma de Mallorca, less populated, “but in which the prices of accommodation on the market are also higher than the maximum amounts established”, justifies the Regional Executive.
Spending limits for accommodation abroad have also increased, notably in Belgium (256 euros per night), Cape Verde (132 euros), Ivory Coast (230 euros), Gambia (162 euros), Ghana (285 euros), Mauritania (167 euros), Portugal (253 euros), Sao Tome and Principe (238 euros) and Senegal (243 euros). The Clavijo government emphasizes that these amounts had been frozen since 2002, causing a “lag” of more than two decades. And he claims to have seen “considerable growth in turnover in countries where people travel more frequently”, taking as a reference the costs borne by the former executive.
The order updating the amounts highlights that inflation had caused a “gap” between the maximum amounts of service remuneration and the “real” amounts of expenditure, suggesting that this was causing a “loss of purchasing power for civil servants”. The Clavijo executive highlights the 62.1% increase in the average price of hotels in Spain between 2008 and 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the increase in the cost of raw materials and the upward trend in fuels and energy. With the renewal of the ceilings, we prevent services from constituting an “economic burden” for their members and the rest of the workers, underlines the Canary Islands government.
Health, the department where spending is increasing the most
The Ministry of Health is the one that recorded the largest increase in spending, with growth of 254.5%, from 39,415 euros spent on diets in the last two years of the last legislature to 139,808.58 euros in the first four semesters of the current one. Next comes Public Works, with an increase of 246.6% compared to the previous government, which translates into 225,135.06 euros more. In third position is Social Assistance, whose growth reached 130.3%, going from 154,300.30 euros spent on the schemes in the previous period to 355,459.56 in the current one.
On the other side of the scale is the Ecological Transition, the ministry which recorded the lowest percentage of variation. Concretely, compensation for reasons of service increased by 8.3%, with 283,240.64 euros spent during the last two years of the 10th legislature and 306,706.48 euros during the current one. Next comes the economic sector, whose members received a total of 24,162.81 euros more over this period, which represents a variation of 19.1%.
Travel, accommodation and living expenses of senior officials must be public by mandate of the Transparency Law of 2013. The regional executive has a page where it disseminates this information on a biannual basis, although with some gaps: the Ministry of Universities, Science, Innovation and Culture has not published data for the second half of 2023, the Ministry of Education has not put online those relating to the first semester 2023, and the links to access the Ministry of Agriculture figures for 2022 and 2021 are directly broken.
A spokesperson for the Universities defends that the department only had its own budget in 2024 and that its expenditure on expenditure in 2023 was recorded in the ministries of Education and the Economy. For its part, Education recommended that this newspaper request the missing information via the Transparency Portal, despite the fact that it is obliged by law to do so. This newspaper had already requested this data via Transparency over the summer and received a response that the information was on the government’s open page for this purpose. The figures used for this report correspond only to ministries, not to their public agencies.
The detail of service allowances received by public representatives of the Canary Islands gained media importance at the beginning of this year when the regional Parliament removed the per diems of its deputies from its transparency portal, just after the EFE Agency published that they had doubled in one year: from 63,000 euros in September 2023 to more than 146,000 in the same month of 2024.
Parliament argued that it had removed the data because it was necessary to “update” it due to certain “errors” detected. But he did not republish this information with the same level of detail as before, limiting himself only to generally setting out the “remuneration and compensation regime of members of the chamber”. The Autonomous Chamber considers that the figures now available on the website “comply with the law” and that with them the remuneration of each deputy can be calculated. A few months ago, however, it was possible to consult the remuneration of each public representative in a specific tab.
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