66,425 contracts priced JUST below the line where competition begins — and 676 above it

Spanish procurement law draws a bright line at €15,000. Below it, a public buyer may award a service or supply contract directly — no competition, no tender, a so-called contrato menor. Above it, competitive procedure becomes compulsory. Lines like this exist across Europe, and they exist for a good reason: nobody wants a three-month procedure for a €3,000 purchase.

But a line this bright casts a shadow, and the shadow is measurable. We hold roughly 2.8 million contratos menores published since 2018. We asked a simple question: how many contracts are priced just under the line, and how many just over it?

Sixty-six thousand four hundred and twenty-five contracts sit in the hundred euros below the ceiling. Six hundred and seventy-six sit in the hundred euros above it. A ratio of 98 to 1.

Could that be natural clustering — buyers budgeting in round numbers? We ran the same measurement at €10,000, a round number with no legal meaning. The ratio there is about 4.5 to 1. Round-number gravity is real, but it is a twenty-times weaker force than the pull of the threshold.

None of this is illegal, and that is what makes it interesting. Each of those 66,425 contracts is, individually, a lawful use of a lawful instrument. Collectively they describe a market-wide habit: when the price of a purchase is negotiable, it negotiates itself to one euro below the point where competition would begin.

The pattern also has a practical reading for suppliers. The space just under the threshold is where public money moves fastest and with the least friction — and where relationships, not tenders, decide who is asked. If your firm sells anything a Spanish public body buys for under €15,000, the operative question is not "where are the tenders?" It is "which buyers make direct awards in my category, and how do I become the firm they call?" That question is answerable — the awards are published, buyer by buyer, and we hold all of them.