The resignation of the Tenerife Ports director exposes corporate ties in a Granadilla tender

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Pablo Nieto has left his post at the head of the Port Authority after his corporate and registered office connections came to light.

The move follows the exclusion of firms linked to an offer deemed abnormally low in a public contract worth €1.9 million.

Pablo Zósimo Nieto Sanz, director of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Port Authority, resigned abruptly citing “personal reasons”.

His departure has shaken the management leadership at the island facility.

The engineer—who has held the position since February 2024 and was replaced by Enrique García-Arroba—came less than a week after media reporting and a reconstruction by ‘Atlántico Hoy’ added another company to a web of corporate connections between the former director and the owners of a rejected bid for the port of Granadilla.

As reported by ‘Atlántico Hoy’, based on a “reconstruction of events through different entries in the Companies Registry” and documentation from the State Contracting Platform and the Port Authority, the alleged conflict of interest is traced to office number 13 on the first floor of the Hamilton building on the paseo Milicias de Garachico in Tenerife’s capital.

At that address, the company Gesproytec Ingeniería Civil y Comunicaciones SL—owned by Nieto and in liquidation since August 2020—has been registered since 2016, although it does not appear in his official CV.

From 2019, various firms tied to public works projects shared that same physical location.

Among the business figures who used that office were José Fernando del Tiempo Matanzo—owner of Contratas y Servicios Bahillo SL, AMC Construcciones y Contratas 2014 SL, Voescanarias SL and EXCAN—and José Andrés Román Solórzano, who owns Birris SL and was a former attorney-in-fact for FCC Construcciones, where he worked professionally alongside Nieto.

Román Solórzano later took executive posts in the Del Tiempo group as an attorney-in-fact for Bahillo from 2022, and as joint administrator at AMC Construcciones and EXCAN.

The story took on public dimension during the bidding process for preparing the temporary yard in phase 2 of the Granadilla port, a project budgeted at €1.9 million.

On January 13, 2025, Nieto signed the project’s justification report and was formally appointed chair of the tender board for the file.

The bid was submitted by a Joint Venture (Unión Temporal de Empresas, UTE) formed by three companies controlled by Del Tiempo and professionally linked to Román Solórzano: Contratas y Servicios Bahillo, AMC Construcciones and Voescanarias—each based at the aforementioned office 13.

As ‘Atlántico Hoy’ notes, “none of the minutes in this process record that Nieto abstained or formally stepped aside from the proceedings due to a possible conflict of interest.”

Although Nieto did not attend the tender board sessions and delegated the signing of the minutes to his substitute, Javier Ignacio Mora Quintero, the public file shows that Nieto “remained the chair of the tender board” in formal terms throughout the entire procedure.

The commercial procedure ended with the technical exclusion of the bid tied to the corporate network at the Hamilton building.

The UTE of Bahillo, AMC and Voescanarias submitted a proposal for €1.58 million (excluding IGIC), positioning itself as the cheapest option in the tender.

On April 25, 2025, the Technical Commission ruled that the submission fell under a presumption of abnormality due to a reckless low bid, in accordance with the tender specifications.

After formally requiring the UTE on May 7, 2025 to justify its economic proposal, the bidders did not provide the explanatory report within the legal deadline, which expired on May 14.

Because of that failure, on May 21, 2025, the tender board agreed on the final inadmissibility of the offer for lack of rectification, ultimately awarding the contract to Asfaltos y Obras Tafuriaste.

The accumulation of evidence disclosed regarding the overlap of registered offices and the absence of formal abstention in the file led to the departure of the Port Authority’s top executive.

The abrupt replacement in the directorate is intended to curb institutional fallout and ensure transparency in the management of Granadilla port’s strategic infrastructure.

The post La dimisión del director de Puertos de Tenerife destapa vínculos societarios en una licitación en Granadilla was first published on canarymaritime.com.

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