Eduardo González
This past Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved the emergency declaration for the contracting of asbestos removal services at the current Cultural Center of the Spanish Embassy in Washington (United States) for a maximum amount of US$155,646.75 (more than €144,300), exempt from VAT.
In 2024, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given the advanced state of deterioration of certain parts of the building that houses this cultural center, a report was requested to assess the presence of asbestos in the air and in construction materials.
The results showed the presence of asbestos in considerably high quantities according to American standards, which require urgent asbestos removal work at the Cultural Center to prevent the continued deterioration of the areas and an increase in the airborne concentration of asbestos particles, which would “seriously affect the health of public employees and the general public who visit it.”
These results, therefore, justify the application of the emergency procedure of Article 120 of the Contracts Law.
This is not the first time that the public treasury has been forced to allocate a significant sum of money to the Spanish Embassy in the United States following a declaration of emergency. In April 2021, up to $188,000 (almost €154,400 at the then-current exchange rate) had to be spent to repair the serious damage caused by flooding following a burst water supply line.
Until then, the Spanish embassy in Washington’s biggest problems had been with the Ambassador’s Residence, designed by architect Rafael Moneo and inaugurated in 2004 by former President José María Aznar.
The building, which cost the public treasury €8.7 million, suffered from such a number of deficiencies that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a ruling in 2013 requiring Moneo to pay €2 million in compensation for damages resulting from the renovation work at the residence. The National Court ultimately overturned this ruling in 2016 because it had “far exceeded” the five-year deadline for the Foreign Office to file a claim against the architect. Moneo himself had acknowledged that the building had construction “problems.”
On March 21, the Association of Spanish Diplomats (ADE) denounced “the poor condition of many of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ buildings abroad,” specifically the embassies and consulates, whose “deterioration” poses “a serious risk to both the people who work there and the public who visit them” and causes “reputational damage to our country’s image.”
