Negrín declares the competition for two Internal Medicine headships expired

The Dr. Negrín University Hospital of Gran Canaria has declared the expiration of the selection process for the temporary provision of two positions as Head of the Internal Medicine Section, announced in 2018 and which was never resolved. The decision was signed by the center’s managing director, Miguel Ángel Ponce González, via a resolution dated September 28, 2026, published in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC) no. 211, of October 22, 2026, within section II, Authorities and Personnel, in the Competitive Examinations and Contests section of the Ministry of Health.

Seven years of a procedure without a resolution

The procedure began with Resolution 3809/2018, of September 10, 2018, from the hospital’s Managing Directorate, published in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands no. 183, of September 20 of the same year. The objective was to temporarily fill two Section Head positions in the Internal Medicine service of Gran Canaria’s reference hospital center.

The only subsequent milestone recorded in the now-published resolution is Resolution 4984/2018, of November 22, 2018, which approved the provisional list of admitted and excluded applicants. From that point on, the file remained stalled: there is no record of a final resolution or a proposal of selected candidates.

The resolution itself acknowledges that, after the maximum legal period had elapsed, it was noted that there was “the paralysis or the expiration of the maximum period to resolve,” which obliges the competent body to formally declare the expiration instead of keeping open a process that can no longer be completed.

The legal deadline expired in December 2019

The applied framework consists of two specific regulations:

• Article 78 of Law 2/1987, of March 30, on the Canary Islands Public Service, sets a maximum period of fifteen months for selection and competition procedures, counted up to the proposal of selected applicants or its resolution.
• Article 21 of Law 39/2015, of October 1, on the Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations, regulates the maximum period for the notification of the express resolution.

With these parameters, the calculation is unequivocal: the call was published on September 20, 2018, and the maximum period to resolve ended on December 20, 2019. The expiration is therefore declared almost seven years after that deadline.

The managing director’s competence to issue the resolution derives from the delegation carried out by the Resolution of January 3, 1996, of the General Directorate of Human Resources (BOC no. 7, of January 15, 1996), and from the third additional provision of Decree 123/1999, of June 17, on the selection of statutory personnel and the provision of basic positions and jobs in the health service delivery bodies of the Canary Health Service (BOC no. 92, of July 14, 1999).

A resolution that exhausts administrative remedies

The operative part of the text contains three pronouncements: declaring the expiration of the public call, ordering its publication in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands and opening the channels for appeal. The resolution ends the administrative process, such that the interested parties have two alternatives:

• Contentious-administrative appeal within two months from the day following notification, before the corresponding Contentious-Administrative Courts according to article 14 of Law 29/1998, of July 13.
• Optional appeal for reversal within one month before the Directorate of the Canary Health Service, pursuant to articles 123 and 124 of Law 39/2015; if this route is chosen, it is not possible to go to the jurisdiction until it is expressly resolved or dismissed by silence.

Consequences for the service and for the applicants

The expiration nullifies a competition that had been open since 2018 and forces any attempt to fill those two Internal Medicine Section headships to restart from scratch, with a new call and a new merit scale. For the applicants who applied at the time, the resolution formally closes an expectation of nearly seven years and opens a limited period for them to appeal. For the hospital, the matter highlights the interim or pending coverage of two middle management positions in a particularly sensitive service, in a center that is a healthcare reference for the northern area of Gran Canaria.

Source: Official Gazette of the Canary Islands, no. 211, October 22, 2026, II. Authorities and personnel – Competitive examinations and competitions, pages 38033-38034 (official reference: 3632).