Spain's Civil Service Exams: Allegations of Favoritism and Rigged Vacancies

Civil Service Exams: The Job That Has an Owner Before the Test

A scene repeats itself in hospital corridors, schools, and administrative offices: someone asks the interim worker when "their" position will be up for competition. The question is not innocent. Behind it lies a widespread suspicion, difficult to dispel, that public calls arrive only after the beneficiary has already been determined by hours of experience, accumulated points, or simply seniority in the role. The debate over whether civil service exams are a scam has 182 responses and nearly two years of history. It cannot be resolved with a single headline.

The Accusation: Tailored Vacancies and Experience Weighing More Than the Exam

The core of the accusation is specific. In many concurso-oposición (mixed merit-exam) processes, merits from previous work experience—official courses, years in administration, accumulated hours—carry so much weight that external candidates face structural disadvantage. A case cited in the discussion involves a daughter who passes her exam only to discover that interims in the province keep their posts because the vacancies have been "tailored" with requirements met only by those who have held the spot for twenty years. The new official ends up assigned far away. Merits earned before passing do not count for them; for the interim, they do.

Some call this outright fraud. Others nuance the claim: in the General State Administration and general bodies, several messages argue, open positions are truly open, with no points for experience, and everyone starts on equal footing. However, in healthcare and education, the mixed merit-exam system has been the norm for decades. The distinction between the open turn and internal promotion is the line separating legitimate grievance from myth.

The Interim Is Not the Villain: They Are the Weakest Link

The conversation shifts when someone notes that the interim did not choose to be there either. They passed their exams at the time, entered the waiting list, and over the years—family obligations, relentless work, bad luck in subsequent calls, diminished study capacity at a certain age—they lost the chance to secure a permanent post. They possess something the newcomer lacks: real experience and knowledge of the job. The lingering question is uncomfortable: who teaches better, one who masters the subject after years in the classroom or one who has just memorized the syllabus?

The answer is not unanimous. Some argue that continuous training and specific preparation of recent candidates outweigh habit. Others recall that interims, due to their instability, handle different groups each year and prepare "as best they can," knowing they may never see those students again.

The Real Scam: Waiting Lists, Fees, and Surprise Exams

Beyond the merit-exam system, the narrative accumulates minor grievances that add up. An aspiring orderly shares that they studied for months for a low-profile post, only to discover during the test that incorrect answers deducted points. They were unaware. Had they known, they would not have applied. They ended up moving 800 kilometers to another province because knowledge of Basque language reduced rankings in theirs. The exam also included technical questions disproportionate to the level of the position.

Waiting lists receive similar criticism: accused of operating on opaque criteria, with placements bypassing theoretical order. And the cost of trying—academies, printer ink, years without remuneration—always falls on the same person: the external candidate.

The Context Explaining the Fever: Fleeing the Private Sector

Why are so many people willing to endure this? Because public employment is perceived as the only stable refuge. One message summarizes it plainly: many try to flee the private sector "like the plague." The result is brutal competitiveness even for low-profile posts. Those who pass a modest exam often do so solely to secure stability, aiming to jump to something better later.

Repeated advice is not to bet everything on a single call. Prepare for several simultaneously, medium or low profile, diversify. Because the luck factor—the right vacancy appearing, the tribunal grading as expected, the syllabus matching—carries a weight no study guide acknowledges.

Historical Comparison: When No One Wanted to Be a Civil Servant

The discussion turns to the past. It is argued that in the seventies, with full employment and purchasing power that seems impossible today, being a lifelong civil servant attracted almost no one. Tables were set up on Murcia’s Gran Vía offering jobs at the new hospital, yet finding sign-ups was difficult. Salaries and housing prices then are debated vigorously, with figures that don’t align across accounts and warnings that memory deceives when cumulative inflation distorts everything.

The contrast with today is the implicit argument: if public employment has become a mass object of desire, it is not because it improved, but because everything else deteriorated. Stability is paid for with years of study without guarantee, exams designed to filter, and vacancies that sometimes have names attached before they are even announced.

What if the problem isn’t the interim keeping their post, nor the candidate breaking their back studying, but a system that turns both efforts into competition for crumbs of stability?