For years, Joaquín García was collecting a salary from a government job that, according to a court ruling, he simply wasn’t turning up to do.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!And incredibly, nobody noticed.
The Spanish civil servant reportedly managed to disappear from work for “at least” six years before finally being exposed in the most ironic way imaginable — when he became eligible for an award celebrating his loyal service.
The bizarre case quickly earned García the nickname “el funcionario fantasma” — the phantom official — after Spanish media revealed how a mix-up between departments allegedly allowed him to vanish unnoticed while remaining fully employed.
García, an engineer from Cádiz in south-west Spain, began working for the local authority in 1990 before later being assigned to the municipal water company, Agua de Cadiz, in 1996.
His role involved supervising a wastewater treatment plant, and on paper at least, everything appeared normal.
But according to reports, the reality inside the office was very different.
The situation only came to light in 2010 when García, then 69 years old and approaching retirement, was due to receive a plaque recognising 20 years of dedicated service.
That was the moment deputy mayor Jorge Blas Fernández started asking a fairly reasonable question: where exactly was he?
“He was still on the payroll,” Fernández told Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “I thought, where is this man? Is he still there? Has he retired? Has he died?”
What followed only made the story stranger.
The former manager of the water board — whose office was reportedly directly opposite García’s — allegedly admitted he had not seen the engineer for years.
Fernández then called García in for answers.
“I asked him: what are you doing?” Fernández said. “What did you do yesterday? And the previous month? He could not answer.”
A court later ruled that García had carried out “absolutely no work” between 2007 and 2010 and concluded he did not appear to have occupied his office for “at least six years.”
Some reports suggested the absence may have stretched as long as 14 years.
The court ultimately fined García €27,000 (£21,000), equivalent to roughly one year of his salary after tax. It was reportedly the maximum amount the company could legally reclaim.
At the time, García had been earning around €37,000 a year before tax through the publicly-run water company.
Despite the ruling, García denied the allegations.
He insisted he had attended the office, although he acknowledged he may not have kept regular business hours.
According to García, the real issue stemmed from political tensions and workplace bullying connected to his family’s socialist beliefs, per The Guardian.
He claimed he had effectively been pushed aside after being transferred into a role where there was supposedly no meaningful work to do.
Mr Garcia said he had been a victim of political bullying in the job and moved to a post where there was no work to do.
People close to him later told El Mundo that he had been reluctant to formally complain because he had a family to support and feared he would struggle to find another job at his age.
Friends also claimed the situation had affected his mental health and that he had become deeply depressed, even seeing a psychiatrist during the period.
Meanwhile, the court heard how confusion between the city council and the water company appeared to create the perfect bureaucratic blind spot.
The water company reportedly believed García was being supervised by the local authority, while the local authority assumed he was working under the water company’s management.
As a result, nobody properly checked whether he was actually doing the job.
And while the case became international headline material, García apparently used the time in a very different way.
According to those close to him, he dedicated himself to reading philosophy and eventually became highly knowledgeable on the works of Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, widely regarded as one of the key thinkers of the Enlightenment.
So while officials believed he was supervising infrastructure projects, García was reportedly spending his days immersed in philosophical texts instead.
Following the ruling, García’s lawyer said his client had gone into hiding because of what was described as a media “lynching.”
He later wrote to the mayor asking not to be forced to pay the fine and sought a review of the judgment.
But by then, the story had already taken on a life of its own.
Because in an era where most workers panic if they miss a single Teams notification, García somehow allegedly disappeared for years — only to get caught when someone tried to give him an award for showing up.
Featured image credit: Kampus Production / Cottonbro Studio / Pexels
