An endless pile of unpaid invoices

In early July, Spain's cities and towns were more than 37 billion euros in the red. This is the highest level of total municipal debt on record, and it comes at the worst possible time, when revenue has plummeted. The situation is so dire that some local corporations have started to fire personnel; others have been withholding payment to their providers for years; some have seen streets and squares seized over payment defaults; and then there are those that have come up with extravagant savings measures, such as turning off the traffic lights at night.

What follows are the stories of five local treasurers; people who are on the frontline of the crisis and are forced to deal with multiple day-to-day needs with a shocking lack of funds.

José Manuel Pardal. Vilagarcía de Arousa (Pontevedra). It is 8am when Vilagarcía's treasurer walks up the steps of the town hall, taking himself and his briefcase to the municipal offices. Today, José Manuel Pardal hopes to make progress on the restructuring plan commissioned by Mayor Tomás Fole of the Popular Party (PP). This document will be the financial blueprint against the crisis over the next four years. The conservative party, which rules this town of nearly 38,000 residents, puts the deficit at nearly four million euros.

Pardal spends two hours a day dealing with the battered finances that the PP found itself with when it took over after 20 years of leftist rule by the Socialists and the nationalists of BNG. The providers alone are owed nearly seven million euros. "I'm okay with it, by being methodical and trying to keep everything under control, one bit at a time," he says. The main problem is how to pay 500 overdue bills. A 1.2-million-euro loan from the Spanish credit institution ICO will allow the town to pay off around 10 percent of the amount it owes. "We'll see how we deal with the rest," says Pardal, looking concerned.

The city official has words of praise for the municipal staff, despite the fact that there is a glut of workers: 400 employees whose salaries take up fully half of the town's 30-million-euro budget. "I can't complain because they're all doing their job and they're very committed." Still, the city is planning a labor force adjustment plan. "Well, yes, but who is free of that threat these days? You're not, either here or anywhere else."

Iban López. Santurtzi (Bizkaia). "This term of office is ruled by imagination, not money ? there is none," says Iban López, 41, who is the head of the treasury department at Santurtzi, home to 47,000 people. This town, 15 kilometers from Bilbao, has been ruled by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) since May, and austerity has been the norm ever since. "We have to cut back wherever we can," he says. Not long ago, city officials considered changing all the light bulbs on the streets. "In boom times, this would have been carried out without thinking twice about it. Not now. We thought about it, we did the math. We only made the change where we saw that it would be worth it because the new lights would consume 25 percent less electricity."

López boasts about being a "politician on the street." As soon as he can, he leaves the office and seeks direct contact with people. "Some people are very angry and they say all kinds of things to me. I listen to them and we talk. I always try to talk. If someone comes to my office and says he cannot pay property tax because of the current situation, I try to find a solution, like paying in installments. I also try to be punctual in my payments to workshops or businesses that work for us and are going through difficult times," he says. Despite everything, López feels that "things are not that bad" at his corporation.

Javier Serralvo. Vila-real (Castellón). There is always a green folder sitting on his table, with a label that says "Bills pending signature." When he became the head of the local treasury department in Vila-real, population 51,367, Javier Serralvo found that the town owed 4.5 million euros in bills. More invoices came in over the next month, bringing the total up to nearly six million, over 15 percent of the local budget. Now, for about 12 hours a day, Serralvo tries to put some order in the municipal accounts. And it's not just the bills ? it's also the money owed to the city by the regional government of Valencia and the 20-million-euro loan that the former government team took out and which must now be paid off.

Serralvo, a Socialist, spends many hours at his desk. And it's almost better that way, because every time he ventures out, someone comes up to him to ask when he's going to be paid. The first thing he did when he was appointed to the post was to review all pending payments, draw up a plan and suggest a change to the budget to pay off around 800,000 euros between September and October. "The rest we will pay by April 30," he asserts. And there is another issue. There are over one million euros in bills that he is carefully poring over, because many of them were sent by Lubasa and Piaf, two of the companies under investigation in a case of alleged illegal financing by the PP. "We are finding invoices for work that was never done," says Serralvo.

Carlos Esgueva. Montgat (Barcelona). "My day is all about routine, it's not very interesting," warns Carlos Esgueva, the treasurer of Montgat, population 10,500. But nothing could be further from the truth. Esgueva, an economist and financial analyst by trade, worked for years in multinational firms. His job there was to find investors. And that is exactly what he is trying to do now. His main concern is the amount of red tape and the organizational defects of his new workplace. "It's like managing chaos," he admits. The current debt level, estimated at 358,000 euros, is not a major concern for a town ? run by the center-right nationalists of CiU ? that enjoys a budget of 11 million euros. But it could become a problem in the near future, as the town will have to ask for a one-million-euro loan to deal with two expropriations.

On one end of his desk, around 150 files pile up every day ? bills, transfer orders and the like. Esgueva spends a couple of hours a day reviewing them. "What are they, why are they being paid and is there a way of doing this cheaper?" is his slogan every time he opens one of the files.

Diego Galindo Saeta. Mengíbar (Jaén). At age 33, Diego Galindo Saeta is taking his first steps in local politics as the treasurer of Mengíbar, a town of 9,780 souls in the province of Jaén. "The worst part is the impotence you feel when you have to tell providers that there's no money and that they will have to wait," says this Socialist who is not a full-time public employee, and who combines his position with his regular job as a computer programmer.

Galindo, interestingly, is also in charge of the local fiestas. "The treasurer told the fiesta chief that there was no money," he jokes. He solved the problem by reducing the fiesta budget by half and using a lot of imagination to draw up the program. "We favored cheap and local."