Friday, 2 October 2026.
The Cabildo de Fuerteventura, through its Contracts Department, and the Observatorio de Contratación Pública Responsable de Canarias (Canary Islands’ Observatory for Responsible Public Procurement), driven by Red Anagos, have launched a joint initiative to promote reserved and strategic public procurement. The aim is to turn the island’s public purchasing into a tool for social cohesion, inclusive employment and local development.
According to the Cabildo and the Observatory, the initiative stems from a clear reality. Law 9/2017 on Public Sector Contracts requires administrations to set aside a portion of their contracts for Special Employment Centres with a social purpose and for Insertion Companies. It also allows social, environmental and innovation criteria to be included across the board in tendering processes. However, Fuerteventura’s social enterprise sector is still very small, which limits the scope of these tools. For this reason, the collaboration combines work with the administration alongside efforts to strengthen the island’s social economy ecosystem.
The collaboration will be developed along three lines of work: training, tailored advice and technical support. This week saw the start of an initial training session for Cabildo staff and officials responsible for procurement, covering the legal framework, contract reservation and the inclusion of social clauses in tender specifications. Over the coming months, tailored advice will be offered to the departments that promote contracts, to help identify which services can be reserved and how to design tenders that are accessible to social economy organisations.
Finally, technical support will be provided for drafting and approving a Cabildo Government Agreement. This agreement will set minimum reservation percentages, strategic contracting criteria and monitoring mechanisms.
The Contracts Councillor, Luis González, highlighted the value of this type of initiative, which creates jobs for the island’s most vulnerable residents and promotes socially fairer public procurement.
Meanwhile, Samuel García-Castro, coordinator of the Observatory, stressed that “reserved contracting is not an option, it is a legal obligation and an opportunity. A well-designed Government Agreement makes it possible to move from regulation to practice and offers certainty to technical teams and social organisations alike”.
Both parties agree that this work could make Fuerteventura a benchmark in the Canary Islands for using public procurement as a lever for inclusion.
