Council accounts reporting

🔍 Transparency: who fails to account for public money

Public administrations are required by law to submit certain financial information every year. Using official data, this page shows which administrations fail to do so, where they are and who was in power when the deadline expired.

Municipal budget outturn

Every town council must submit its budget outturn (what it actually collected and spent) to the Ministry of Finance by 31 March of the following year (art. 15.3 of Order HAP/2105/2012, implementing Organic Law 2/2012 on Budgetary Stability). Without that information there is no way of knowing what public money is spent on. (Álava and Navarre are excluded from this indicator because of their foral regime; see the methodology.)

Those that did not submit it for 2024

Sorted from most to fewest inhabitants. «At the deadline» = 31 March 2025, the deadline for submitting the 2024 outturn.

By region

By governing party

Outturns not submitted between 2013 and 2024 by the political family of the mayor at the deadline. The adjusted ratio compares each party with what would be expected of municipalities of the same size, in the same community and the same year: 1 = as expected; 2 = twice as much; 0.5 = half. If the confidence interval includes 1, the difference may be due to chance.

Only families with at least 300 town council-years. «Sin detalle en la fuente» (no detail in the source) groups mayoralties whose list appears in the official register under a generic coalition label; «Independientes y locales» (independents and local parties) groups voter associations. The families govern very different municipalities (size, community, resources): the ratio adjusts for size, but not for other differences.

Trend

General Account and internal control (Court of Audit)

The General Account brings together all of a town council's accounts (budget, balance sheet, results, treasury). Once approved by the full council, it must be sent to the Court of Audit (or to the community's external audit body) by 15 October of the following year (arts. 212.5 and 223.2 of the consolidated text of the Local Finance Act). In addition, every town council must submit by 30 April its internal control information (decisions adopted despite objections from the comptroller and the main revenue anomalies; art. 218.3 of the same law) and, before the end of February, the annual list of contracts or, if there were none, a nil return (art. 335 of the Public Sector Contracts Act). The platform does not cover the Basque Country or Navarre, which have their own external audit bodies.

Withholding of central government funds for failing to submit information

When a town council fails to send its budget outturn to the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry withholds the monthly payments of its share of central government taxes (the main transfer it receives from the State) until it does so (art. 36 of Law 2/2011 on the Sustainable Economy). Since 2022 the same happens if it fails to send the year's budget by 1 July or the main budget guidelines for the following year by 15 September (87th additional provision of Law 22/2021). The Ministry publishes the list of town councils affected every month; all of them since October 2016 are gathered here. (There are no Basque or Navarrese town councils: under their foral regime they do not receive this share through the common system.)

Each monthly list is a snapshot: who is still having funds withheld that month. The outturn list is renewed around June (with the outturn from two years earlier) and shrinks as town councils submit it; the budget list appears in November and December, and the budget guidelines list from December to August. There are no amounts for the months in which the Ministry of Finance did not publish the payments-on-account spreadsheet (March and October 2019, November 2020 to January 2021 and February 2022). As elsewhere on the site, amounts are adjusted for inflation, in 2025 euros (INE annual average CPI; for the current year, the average of the months published).

Funds withheld in September 2026

Sorted from most to fewest inhabitants. «Withheld in this round»: euros not transferred since withholding began for that information (if it overlaps with another, the monthly amount is split between them), adjusted for inflation month by month. Some have funds withheld because the Ministry of Finance has not received information from a body or company that depends on the town council, rather than from the council itself.

By autonomous community

By governing party

Each withholding round (one per type of information and financial year) counts as one observation per town council: withheld or not. The political family is that of the mayor when withholding began (or, if the council was not affected, at the start of that round). As with the outturn, the adjusted ratio compares each family with what would be expected in municipalities of the same size, the same community and the same round.

Complete rounds since 2017 (outturns from 2015 to 2024, budgets from 2022 to 2025 and budget guidelines from 2023 to 2026). Only families with at least 300 town councils × round. Withholding for the outturn begins about two years after the deadline for submitting it, so the mayor when withholding began may not be the one who should have sent it (especially after the municipal elections of May 2019 and 2023).

Average supplier payment period

Every town council must calculate and report its average supplier payment period to the Ministry of Finance each quarter (PMP: how many days, on average, it takes to pay its invoices), by the last day of the following month (Royal Decree 635/2014 and art. 16.8 of Order HAP/2105/2012). The Ministry publishes the figures of those who report; any council that does not appear has not reported. The legal maximum for payment is 30 days (art. 13.6 of Organic Law 2/2012). Navarre and, depending on the year, the Basque foral territories are excluded from the reporting indicator: their financial oversight is foral and most of their town councils do not appear in the publication.

Those that did not report it in Q2 2026

Sorted from most to fewest inhabitants. «At the deadline» = the last day of the month following the quarter. A town council that reported late may not appear in that quarter's publication.

By autonomous community

By governing party

Quarters without reporting the PMP over the last three years by the political family of the mayor at the deadline, compared with what would be expected in municipalities of the same size, the same community and the same quarter. Many small town councils fail to report it quarter after quarter, so the observations are not independent and the true interval is somewhat wider than shown.

Paying in more than 30 days

Among the town councils that do report their PMP, these are the ones that in Q2 2026 declared an average payment period above the legal maximum of 30 days. The figure is calculated and signed off by the town council itself.

Last 12 quarters published. Only families with at least 300 town councils × quarter. Councils that do not report their PMP are not included in this calculation, so it is not known whether they pay on time.

Methodology and sources

• Ministry of Finance – CONPREL: the «N» (no data) information status of each body in the final publication of outturns. From 2013; before then the Ministry imputed data for many small municipalities. Provisional releases are not used, because councils that submit late do not yet appear in them.
• Ministry of Territorial Policy – Mayors and councillors: mayor in office on the deadline and the list on which he or she was elected, grouped into political families.
• Legal obligation: art. 15.3 of Order HAP/2105/2012, implementing art. 6 of Organic Law 2/2012.
• Foral territories: in Álava and Navarre the municipal outturn is not channelled to CONPREL through the common system (financial oversight lies with the Provincial Council and the Government of Navarre), nor was it in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa in 2013-2014. Those cases are not counted as non-compliance: they would show up at almost 100% because of the foral regime, not because of each town council.
• Court of Audit – Local Authority Accounts Platform (Court of Audit and regional external audit bodies): the status of each town council in the General Account, internal control and contracts queries, and the submission date of each General Account submitted. The platform does not offer bulk downloads: its pages are queried with pauses and only the statuses and dates are stored, together with the extraction date. Each body is matched to its INE code using its Ministry of Finance (MEH) and Common Directory (DIR3) codes, and by name and province where these are missing.
• Deadlines: General Account, 15 October of the following year (arts. 212.5 and 223.2 of the TRLRHL); internal control, 30 April (art. 218.3 of the TRLRHL and 2019 Court of Audit Instruction); list of contracts, end of February (art. 335 of the LCSP and 2018 Instruction). Only financial years whose deadline has passed are counted.
• «On time» is measured using the submission date shown by the platform; if an account is recorded as submitted but its date is unknown, it is classified neither as on time nor as late.
• Ministry of Finance – Local Authorities Virtual Office: monthly list (in PDF) of town councils whose share of central government taxes is withheld, since October 2016, and the monthly payments-on-account spreadsheet with the amount withheld from each. Until October 2022 the lists only give the name: they are matched to the INE code by name and province (all match; three with a typo in the name, by approximation). In those older lists the outturn year is not stated and is inferred from the round (the June round of year A corresponds to the outturn for A-2, as in later lists). The amounts in the PDFs and the spreadsheets agree on town councils almost month by month.
• Withholding of funds: art. 36 of Law 2/2011 on the Sustainable Economy (outturn, in conjunction with art. 193.5 of the TRLRHL) and the 87th additional provision of Law 22/2021 on the 2022 Budget (budget and budget guidelines). Each monthly list is a snapshot of who is still having funds withheld, not of who failed to comply that month. The foral territories do not appear because they do not receive the share through the common system.
• Ministry of Finance – PMP_NET: average payment period of each local authority by quarter, since the third quarter of 2014. «Not reporting» = the town council exists that year (INE Municipal Register) but does not appear in that quarter's publication. Obligation: Royal Decree 635/2014 (amended by RD 1040/2017) and art. 16.8 of Order HAP/2105/2012; maximum of 30 days, art. 13.6 of Organic Law 2/2012. The 30-day threshold only applies from the second quarter of 2018, when RD 1040/2017 changed the calculation (previously it deducted the 30-day approval period and could be negative). In Navarre (every year), Álava (until 2022) and Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa (until the second quarter of 2016) most town councils do not appear in the publication because of the foral channel: those cases are not counted as non-compliance.
• Only town councils are considered; provincial councils, associations of municipalities and minor local bodies have their own obligations and are not included here.

Data updated 7 minutes ago