Baños de Ebro puts the lease of the El Soto Vineyards out to tender

The Baños de Ebro City Council has announced a public tender for the lease and agricultural exploitation of the municipal heritage estates known as «Viñas El Soto», with a minimum bid of 1,000.00 euros per year. The call was approved by the Municipal Plenary in the session of October 2, 2026, together with file 2026/93, and the announcement is published in the Official Gazette of the Historical Territory of Álava (BOTHA) number 126, dated November 2, 2026, in section II of Local Administration, with official reference 2026-03076.

The decision corresponds to the municipal governing body, which acts as the lessor of heritage-owned plots and not as a simple manager of a service. The plenary agreement enables the call and establishes the economic and legal conditions that are subsequently detailed in the specifications, to which the announcement itself refers for the exact delimitation of the land and the obligations of the lessee. The file includes the plot certificates that identify each estate.

The area subject to the contract amounts to 94,950.96 m², that is, 9.495096 hectares, according to the areas delimited in the specifications and in the plot certificates incorporated into the file. It is, therefore, an operation of modest but compact size, of interest to the wine sector established in the municipality’s surroundings.

Area, duration and extension

The contract is structured as a lease of heritage estates intended for agricultural exploitation, with a total area of 94,950.96 m² distributed according to the delimitation of the specifications.

• Total area: 94,950.96 m² (9.495096 hectares).
• Initial duration: two years from the formalization of the contract.
• Extension: a single express extension of up to another two years, neither automatic nor tacit.
• Minimum bid: 1,000.00 euros per year, improvable upwards.

The maximum possible duration is thus four years, but only if an express extension occurs, so the continuity of the operation is not guaranteed by the mere passage of time. The announcement does not provide for successive extensions or automatic renewals.

Minimum rent and sole award criterion

The economic aspect is resolved with a fixed upward rent scheme: the starting price is set at one thousand euros (1,000.00 euros) per year, an amount that bidders may improve.

• Sole award criterion: the highest annual rent offered.
• Indispensable condition: that the offer be equal to or higher than the minimum bid.
• Improvement: admitted only upwards.

Concentrating the entire weight of the evaluation on the annual rent simplifies the comparison of proposals and reduces the margin of discretion, as no other evaluation criteria subject to value judgments are foreseen.

Fifteen calendar days and electronic submission

Proposals shall be submitted exclusively by electronic means, in the manner provided for in the specifications and through the Public Procurement Platform of Euskadi, within a period of fifteen calendar days starting from the day following the publication of the announcement in the BOTHA. The count begins on November 3 and concludes on November 17, 2026.

• Place of submission: Public Procurement Platform of Euskadi.
• Form: as established in the specifications.
• Documentation: contractor profile of the City Council of Baños de Ebro, hosted on the aforementioned platform, and the municipal electronic office.

The announcement was signed in Baños de Ebro on October 26, 2026, by the mayor, Francisco Javier García Pérez de Loza, and is published for general knowledge and for the purpose of submitting proposals.

The competition offers the wine sector the possibility of incorporating nearly ten hectares of municipal vineyard in a municipality with a winemaking tradition, with a limited initial outlay and a procedure resolved exclusively by price. For the municipal coffers, it means converting patrimonial estates into a recurring annual income for an initial period of two years.

Source: Official Gazette of the Historical Territory of Álava (BOTHA), no. 126, November 2, 2026, section II - Local Administration of the Historical Territory of Álava (official reference: 2026-03076).