Opposition parties in Vélez-Málaga force extraordinary council meeting over new rubbish tax

On Tuesday the town's PSOE spokesperson, Víctor González, announced that his group would table a proposal at that meeting to amend the tax by-law before the end of the year. “After the outcry from so many people calling for solutions, all we have received in response is silence,” said González, who argued that the meeting would offer the town hall “a new opportunity to rectify the situation”.

The PSOE also believes that the dispute cannot be reduced solely to isolated errors in the preparation of certain bills. “There may be the odd mistake, but the problem lies with the tax by-law that this government has drafted and approved,” said González, who attributed the amounts being charged to certain households, self-employed individuals and businesses to the very structure of the by-law itself.

The PSOE is focusing on the timetable and argues that any amendment to the by-laws requires initial approval, a public consultation and a resolution of any objections before final approval can be granted. González therefore maintains that the town hall must act before the end of the financial year: “If the by-law is not amended before 31 December, next year we will once again be faced with the same exorbitant bills in our homes and businesses.”

Among the measures the PSOE intends to champion are reviewing the cases of self-employed individuals and businesses that receive multiple tax assessments under different categories of the IAE , analysing charges levied on premises that claim not to generate certain types of waste or to manage it themselves and preventing potential duplication between property owners and business operators. With regard to residential properties, it also proposes reviewing the impact of the number of residents, the treatment of vacant properties, the weighting of the cadastral value, social allowances and incentives for recycling.

The request to the full council comes after the opposition has also taken the dispute onto the streets. On Wednesday 7 October, around a thousand people according to police sources (some 2,000 according to the organisers) gathered outside the town hall to protest against the rubbish tax. ‘No to the tax’, ‘It’s unfair’ and ‘Lower taxes, cleaner streets’ were some of the slogans at a protest attended by neighbourhood groups, shopkeepers, the self-employed and political representatives.

The town hall maintains that the introduction of a specific tax is in accordance with State Law 7/2022, Article 11 of which requires local authorities to have a "specific, distinct and not loss-making" that reflects the cost of waste collection, transport and treatment. The by-laws of Vélez-Málaga were approved by the full council on 31 October 2025, definitively published in December and have been in force since 1 January this year.