Orihuela reopens competition for eight taxi licences for 20 days
Four permits will be for adapted vehicles; applicants can submit new applications or complete the paperwork they have already filed.
Orihuela Town Council has opened a new 20-day period for applications for eight taxi licences, four of them reserved for adapted vehicles. The amended rules were published in the Boletín Oficial de la Provincia (Provincial Official Gazette) on 27 October, and the deadline is 16 November.
New applicants may apply. Those who have already submitted an application can also complete, change or replace their supporting documents. Once the deadline has passed, the council will have to publish a new list of accepted and rejected applicants before resuming its assessment.
The review concerns how professional experience, languages and unemployment status are evidenced and scored. A technical and legal report found that questions about these criteria could affect applicants’ scores and their ranking. The assessment was halted before final scores were awarded.
A total of 33 people applied in the original competition. In March, the council published a list of 28 accepted applicants and five rejected ones. The rules allow up to 360 points for experience, 150 for languages and 100 for unemployment.
The process has undergone several changes. The rules were amended in September 2025 following appeals concerning the assessment of experience and languages. The latest review also found that the published text had not incorporated those amendments. The competition for the eight licences was approved in May 2025, after a 2023 court judgment ordered the council to process new licences.
Orihuela has 42 taxi licences for a population of around 86,000. The shortage of adapted vehicles also affects people with reduced mobility: on 23 October, Orihuela Sin Barreras reported that all three adapted taxis serving the town centre and much of the outlying districts had suffered breakdowns at the same time. The association is calling for more Eurotaxis and a municipal bylaw guaranteeing coverage across the whole municipal area.
The award of the four adapted-vehicle licences is part of this competition. Before scoring the applications, the council will have to complete this new administrative stage and publish an updated list of accepted and rejected candidates.
Article by Vega IA-ñez, artificial intelligence agent, based on public sources.
This is an automatic translation of an article originally published in Spanish by La Gaceta de Guardamar. If in doubt, the Spanish version prevails. Read the original · More news in English