Outsourcing, mediation and cultural labour. From the series that began with 'Against Optimised Life'.
The authorities have published how much they pay for visitor management at Málaga's municipal museums and how much they planned to allocate to mediation and education services. The documentation recovered does not make it possible to reconstruct how many people provide these services, which collective agreement applies to them, or what their job categories, working hours or pay conditions are.
Like the previous texts in this series, this one has been built exclusively from accessible public information, without submitting any freedom of information requests. And, like the others, it ends in an absence: the overall amounts for part of the work that sustains these museums are known, but not who does it or under what labour structure.
Part of the visitor services at the three municipal centres (Casa Natal de Picasso, Centre Pompidou Málaga and the Collection of the Russian Museum) is delivered through an external service contract. The Agency also approved a procurement procedure to outsource mediation and education services. The two need to be told apart, because they are not at the same stage.
The first, covering visitor management, was awarded and is under way. According to the municipal statement, it includes ticket sales, reception and visitor assistance, audio guides, gallery supervision and information, and event organisation. It was awarded in March 2025 to a services company for €12,318,527.83 including VAT, for four years, starting on 1 April 2025.
The second concerns mediation and education. In December 2024 the City Council approved the procurement procedure for these services, with a maximum budget of €2,566,559.63 including VAT, but I have not found any subsequent award or formalisation in the sources consulted. It is therefore unclear whether these services were awarded on those terms, whether the tender was declared void or whether it is still in progress. I treat it as what the recovered documentation shows: an approved procurement procedure, not a contract whose performance I have been able to verify.
According to the municipal statement itself, the second procedure includes pre-booked group visits, family workshops, art therapy, projects with hospitals and prisons, activities for families at risk of social exclusion and support for groups with physical, cognitive or emotional needs. These are some of the functions through which public museums express their educational, social and inclusive dimension. And they fall within the scope of a procedure that provides for contracting them out for four years.
I have not found the documentation needed to determine whether the tasks planned under the external contract are carried out entirely without involvement from the Agency's own staff. What is clear is that these services, central to the public role the museum claims beyond conserving and exhibiting its collections, form part of the scope of an outsourcing procedure.
There is nothing illegal about this. Outsourcing services is a common and lawful practice in public administration. The problem this text raises is one of visibility. The documentation recovered makes it possible to reconstruct the economic and functional architecture of these services, but not their labour architecture.
For the visitor management contract, the amount, duration, successful bidder and functions included are known. For the mediation and education procedure, the maximum budget, planned duration and scope are known. From the sources consulted, I have been unable to reconstruct how many posts are assigned to the visitor management contract or were envisaged for the mediation and education services, what professional categories they belong to, which collective agreements apply, what their working hours are, what pay they receive, what types of contract exist or how long the staff have been in post.
Without knowing the applicable collective agreement, the full tender specifications and any labour annexes, it is also impossible to determine whether there are specific staff transfer (subrogation) obligations or how a future change of contractor would be handled. I looked for the administrative and technical specifications and any labour annexes, but could not retrieve them from the repositories consulted. I looked for the award of the mediation procedure and did not find it. I looked for public disputes or complaints from staff linked to these services and found no specific case.
This absence does not show that these people are well paid or badly paid. It does not prove that precariousness exists, nor does it allow anyone to claim that it does not. I do not have enough information to comment on their actual conditions. Turning a lack of documentation into a labour grievance would be as dishonest as using it to rule out any problem in advance.
What can be stated is that the overall amounts are accessible: the price of the contract awarded for visitor management and the maximum budget approved for mediation and education. Their labour composition, however, could not be reconstructed from the public documentation recovered. Nor have I been able to determine what share of those amounts goes to wages, social security contributions, coordination, training, materials, administrative costs or profit margin. The value of a contract is not the same as the pay of those who work on it, and confusing the two would be the first mistake.
A distinction must also be drawn between the overall amounts, the estimated labour costs and the conditions actually applied during performance. Even a financial breakdown would show only part of the structure of the service.
This asymmetry, even if lawful, deserves attention. An institution can report how much it spends on serving its visitors or on developing educational and social programmes. But if that labour structure is not accessible with comparable clarity, it is hard to assess how institutional commitment translates into the organisation of work.
The discourse of inclusion and care can be expressed in contract value, duration and services. These figures show the scale and stated priorities of the service, but on their own they do not reveal how the budget is distributed or under what conditions those who deliver it work.
The available documentation also makes it possible to distinguish three levels: the Agency defines and supervises the service; the contractor, where there is one, organises it; and the assigned staff actually deliver it. How day-to-day organisation, professional autonomy and decision-making power are shared among these layers depends largely on tender specifications I have been unable to examine.
The experience visitors receive, which the museum presents as part of its own activity, includes services delivered under an external contract. The documentation recovered does not make it possible to reconstruct the composition or working conditions of the staff assigned to that service. In the case of mediation and education, I have not even been able to confirm the final outcome of the approved procedure.
Here I close a series that began by asking which forms of culture resist absorption by market logic and that has worked its way down, text by text, to the ground on which everything rests. The market that normalises faster than the law. The city that locks in brands for a decade. The province that hands out culture without publishing the rules. And, finally, labour: what makes any cultural experience possible and what is hardest to reconstruct when the system is documented from the outside.
At every level I have found a variant of the same asymmetry: amounts and structures are visible; it is much harder to reconstruct who decides, who stays and under what conditions the work is sustained.
The documents examined make the economic and functional architecture of these services visible, but they do not make it possible to reconstruct their labour architecture. That gap does not prove precariousness or non-compliance, but it does prevent any assessment of how the institutional commitment to education, inclusion and care translates into the labour structure planned for delivering these services and, with the corresponding information on their performance, into the conditions actually applied.
As long as this dimension cannot be examined, cultural policy will be auditable in its amounts and services, but not with the same precision in an essential part of how it works: the labour that sustains it.
That is why what I would ask for is not a complaint but publication: the full administrative and technical specifications for both procedures; any labour or staff transfer annexes, duly anonymised; the applicable collective agreements; the number of posts planned by category and working hours; an aggregate breakdown of labour costs and other costs for each service; and the award decision and formalisation of the mediation and education procedure, if they ever took place.
Much of this information could be published in aggregated or anonymised form, without identifying individual workers. It would allow a better-founded assessment of how these services are structured in labour terms: posts, categories, working hours, projected pay costs and any staff transfer guarantees. To know the conditions actually applied, information would also be needed on the performance of the visitor management contract and, if the mediation and education procedure was ever awarded, of the corresponding contract. And what cannot be verified necessarily limits accountability.
On the open conversation
This text closes the series that began with 'Against Optimised Life' and takes it down to its foundation: labour. The public documentation recovered reveals the economic, temporal and functional dimensions of two procedures linked to Málaga's municipal museums: visitor management, the subject of a contract awarded for €12.3 million including VAT for four years, and mediation and education, for which a maximum budget of €2.57 million was approved. As of 22 September 2026, I have not found the subsequent award or formalisation of this second procedure in the sources consulted.
I have been unable to recover the full specifications, any labour annexes or information on collective agreements, categories, working hours and pay. That is why I make no claims about actual working conditions. My claim is more limited: the economic and functional dimension of these services can be reconstructed, but not their labour structure. Publishing that documentation, or formally requesting it, would be the next step. If anyone would like to contribute from cultural work, public procurement or direct experience of these services, this notebook remains open.
Previous in the series: Who decides culture in Málaga’s towns and villages
Sources
Research carried out by consulting accessible public information, without submitting any freedom of information requests. Date accessed: 22 September 2026.
Visitor management: procurement file 1/2024 of the Public Agency for the Management of the Pablo Ruiz Picasso Birthplace and Other Museum and Cultural Facilities. CPV 92521000; base budget of €10,718,679.21 excluding VAT; three bids. Statement from the Local Government Board of 14 March 2025 approving the award to EULEN, S.A. for €10,180,601.51 excluding VAT (€12,318,527.83 including VAT), for four years starting on 1 April 2025. The statement lists the functions of the service, the annual banks of 4,000 hours for gallery work and 2,500 hours for coordination, the audience research service, the surveys and the training courses for staff.
Mediation and education: statement from the Local Government Board of 13 December 2024 approving the procurement procedure for a maximum of €2,566,559.63 including VAT, for four years with no extension, through an open procedure subject to harmonised regulation. The statement describes its scope as including pre-booked group visits, workshops, art therapy, projects with hospitals and prisons, activities with families at risk of social exclusion, support for groups with physical, cognitive or emotional needs, and the Noche en Blanco (White Night). No subsequent award decision or formalisation was found in the sources consulted, so this research cannot establish whether the planned services were ever awarded or, if so, how they are being delivered.
Documents not found in the repositories and public sources consulted: full administrative and technical specifications for both procedures; any labour or staff transfer annexes; and the award decision or formalisation of the mediation and education service.
Information not reconstructed from the sources consulted: applicable collective agreements, professional categories, number of posts, working hours, pay, types of contract, length of service and specific staff transfer (subrogation) obligations.
Reference collective agreements not attributed to these workforces: there are national collective agreements that regulate similar functions, including that for auxiliary service companies (code 99100265012021) and that for educational leisure and sociocultural animation (code 99100055012011). There is no evidence that these are the ones applied to these services; therefore, their provisions and salary scales are not attributed to the aforementioned workforces.