A glossary of Spanish public procurement: the terms you will meet in a tender

The procedure

Licitación pública (public tender)

A licitación pública is the procedure through which a public administration or public body buys works, services or supplies from companies and professionals, on conditions and criteria set out in advance. The rules are published before anyone bids, and they are the same for everyone competing. If this is your first one, start with how to start bidding for public tenders.

Órgano de contratación (contracting authority)

The órgano de contratación is the authority or unit within the administration that issues the tender, assesses the bids and decides who is awarded the contract. It approves the specifications, and it is where questions go while the tender is open. The award is its decision, which is why no one can promise you will win a particular contract.

Expediente (tender file)

The expediente is the complete set of documents for one tender: the notice, the specifications, the annexes and everything published as the procedure goes on, such as clarifications, amendments and the award. Reviewing an expediente means reading all of it, not just the notice, and following it after you have bid is part of the job.

Anuncio de licitación (contract notice)

The anuncio de licitación is the official notice that opens the procedure: what is being bought, by whom, the budget, the deadline for bids and where to find the specifications. It appears on the contracting authority's buyer profile and on platforms such as the Public Sector Procurement Platform (PLACSP). How to keep track of them all is covered in where public tenders are published in Spain.

Lote (lot)

A lote is one of the independent parts a contract is divided into. Depending on the tender, a company may bid for one lot, several or all of them, and each lot can carry its own requirements and criteria. For a smaller company, the right lot can be the way into a contract that would be out of reach as a whole.

CPV code (Common Procurement Vocabulary)

The CPV is a European system of codes that classifies what each contract is for: works, services or supplies of a particular kind. Every notice carries one or more codes, and they are one of the most reliable ways to filter opportunities. They are not enough on their own: two contracts with the same CPV can ask for very different things, which is why a tender search with judgement reads the requirements too.

Presupuesto, duración y prórroga (budget, term and extension)

The presupuesto base de licitación is the most the contracting authority expects to pay for the contract; the duración is how long the contract runs; and the prórroga is the option to extend it beyond that initial term, on whatever terms the specifications set out. Read together, the three tell you the real size of the contract and whether it makes sense for your company.

The documents

Pliegos (tender specifications)

The pliegos are the documents that govern the tender. They set out what is being bought, who can bid, what documentation must be provided, what the technical requirements are, how bids will be scored and what conditions the contract will carry. There are two main ones, the PCAP and the PPT, plus their annexes. Both are explained in depth in what the PCAP and PPT specifications are.

PCAP (administrative specifications)

The PCAP, or Pliego de Cláusulas Administrativas Particulares, sets out the administrative and financial rules of the procedure: who can take part, the solvency required, the documentation, the award criteria, the guarantees, the deadlines and the terms of the contract. It is the document that tells you how to compete. When a bid is thrown out on a technicality, the reason was almost always written in the PCAP.

PPT (technical specifications)

The PPT, or Pliego de Prescripciones Técnicas, describes the technical requirements of the service, supply or works being bought: what has to be done, with what resources and to what standard. It is what the technical proposal is written against, and later the yardstick against which delivery is checked.

Anexos (annexes)

The anexos are the documents that come with the specifications: template declarations, the form for the financial offer, supplementary specifications and mandatory formats. Some of the requirements that knock out the most bids live here, such as a template that must be used exactly as given or a page limit, so a set of specifications has not been read until its annexes have.

Who can bid

Solvencia (economic and technical standing)

Solvencia is the economic, financial, technical or professional capacity a company has to prove before it can bid for a contract. Economic standing asks whether the company can carry the contract; technical standing asks whether it knows how to do the work, and is usually shown through experience of similar contracts, staff, resources or certifications. It is a condition of entry, not a score: you either meet it or you do not. There is more in solvency, the ESPD and joint ventures.

Clasificación empresarial (contractor classification)

Clasificación is an official accreditation that places a company by type of activity and by the category of contract it can take on. In some contracts it is mandatory, in others it is one way of proving solvency, and in many it is not needed at all. The specifications say which applies, and it is worth knowing before you spend hours on a bid.

DEUC (European Single Procurement Document, ESPD)

The DEUC is a standard European declaration in which a company states at the outset that it meets certain conditions for taking part, without supplying every supporting document at the first stage. It makes bidding simpler without removing the burden of proof: whatever is declared has to be backed up if the contracting authority asks. Exactly how it is used depends on the procedure.

Declaración responsable (self-declaration)

A declaración responsable is a signed statement in which the company affirms, on its own responsibility, that it meets certain conditions for contracting and can prove them when asked. It is a fixture of the administrative documentation, and its exact wording comes from the template in the specifications. Signing something you cannot later back up is a real risk.

UTE (temporary joint venture)

A UTE, or Unión Temporal de Empresas, lets several companies bid for a tender together, pooling what each brings, such as experience or resources, to deliver a contract none could take on alone. The requirements and each partner's responsibilities have to be checked tender by tender.

Subcontratación (subcontracting)

Subcontratación means handing part of the work under the contract to another company. Whether it is allowed, for which parts and on what terms is set by the specifications, and sometimes it has to be declared in the bid itself. Alongside the UTE, it is one way of bidding with another company where the tender permits it.

Adscripción de medios (commitment of resources)

Adscripción de medios is a commitment to dedicate specific people or equipment to delivering the contract: a team with certain profiles, particular premises, particular machinery. Where the specifications require it, it forms part of the documentation and binds the company for the whole life of the contract, so commit only what you genuinely have.

How bids are scored

Criterios de adjudicación (award criteria)

The criterios de adjudicación are the rules by which bids are scored and compared. Some are automatic, such as price run through a formula; others depend on a value judgement, such as the quality of the methodology in the technical proposal. Knowing how the points are distributed before a single line is written shapes the bid more than any other decision.

Fórmula económica (price-scoring formula)

The fórmula económica is the formula in the PCAP that turns each price into points. Not every formula rewards price in the same way: under some, cutting the price a little further barely moves the score; under others, every euro counts. Working through the formula, the price scenarios and how sensitive the score is to each of them is part of tender analysis.

Oferta anormalmente baja (abnormally low tender)

An oferta anormalmente baja, often called a baja temeraria, is a bid priced so far below the others that the contracting authority doubts it can be delivered. The specifications set out how one is identified, and the company concerned usually has to justify its price; if it cannot, the bid may be excluded. That is why the final price should never go below the minimum margin the company has set for itself.

Memoria técnica (technical proposal)

The memoria técnica is the document in which a company explains how it will deliver the contract: methodology, work plan, team, schedule, resources, quality, risk management and improvements. It is usually scored on value-judgement criteria, so its structure should follow the criteria in the specifications and its content should rest on what the company can evidence. How AI changes it is covered in technical proposals with AI.

Garantías (guarantees)

Garantías are sums a company lodges to back its bid or the performance of the contract. A provisional guarantee, where the specifications require one, backs the bid while the procedure runs; the definitive guarantee is lodged by the winning bidder and secures proper delivery of the contract. If either is required, its form and amount are in the PCAP.

Before and after you bid

Go / no-go (bid / no-bid)

Go / no-go is the decision whether to bid for a particular tender, taken before hours go into the offer. It turns on questions such as whether the company meets the mandatory requirements, what documentation is missing, what risks the tender carries and how much work the bid would take. Taken badly, it is the most expensive decision in the process; we walk through it in how to decide which tenders to bid for.

Causas de exclusión (grounds for exclusion)

Causas de exclusión are the reasons a bid is removed from the procedure before it is scored, or set aside afterwards. The most common ones are avoidable: a mandatory requirement not met, solvency not proven, a missing document or annex, a format or page limit ignored, a bid that arrives after the deadline, or an abnormally low price left unjustified. Checking the complete bid against the specifications before it goes in exists for exactly this.

Adjudicación (contract award)

The adjudicación is the contracting authority's decision choosing the bid that wins the contract. It is published in the tender file and, where the data is available, shows the score you obtained, your competitors' scores and the winning bid. That is the raw material for a better next bid: a company that only checks whether it won or lost throws away half of what each tender is worth.

Where Carabela comes in

Knowing the terms is the first step; applying them to a few hundred pages of specifications with a deadline bearing down is another matter. That is the work Carabela's tender analysis does: it reads the main documents and the annexes and sets out the subject of the contract, the lots, the budget, the term, the deadlines, the award criteria and their formulas, the solvency required, any classification, the guarantees, the mandatory formats and the potential grounds for exclusion. It separates what is mandatory from what scores, flags what your company still has to confirm and, if you decide to go ahead, prepares the technical proposal against those same criteria. Whether to bid, the final price and the signature remain your decisions.