Employee Vanishes From Work for 6 Years and Nearly Receives Tribute for Dedication

Written by Fabio Lucas Carvalho

Published on 06/06/2025 at 12:02

Updated on 06/06/2025 at 12:03

Foto: Reprodução

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For Years, No One Noticed His Absence. A Public Employee in Spain Went Six Years Without Showing Up for Work and Was Almost Honored for His Alleged Dedication. The Case Only Came to Light When the Award Was About to Be Delivered.

In 2016, an unusual case caught attention in the city of Cádiz, Spain. The public employee Joaquín García, 69, was fined €27,000 (approximately R$ 120,000 at the time) for having missed work for six years without being noticed.

Unexpected Discovery

García’s prolonged absence was only noticed when he was about to be honored for completing 20 years of service.

The vice mayor of Cádiz tried to locate him to organize the delivery of the commemorative plaque, but no one in the office knew where he was.

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Position Without Duties

García worked as a supervisor at a water treatment plant. During the trial, he claimed he was intentionally assigned to a position with no real duties.

According to the newspaper El Mundo, the employee stated that this situation was retaliation for his family’s political positions.

Despite the justifications, the Spanish courts decided to impose the fine.

The amount is equivalent to one year’s salary, after taxes and charges are deducted. The decision was formalized in 2016, a year after García retired.

Lack of Clear Supervision

A miscommunication between local authorities and the water company may have allowed the absence to last so long.

The company believed García was supervised by public agencies. Meanwhile, local authorities thought the responsibility lay with the water treatment company.

The company’s own manager stated that he had not seen García for years, even though their offices are nearby.

During that time, family members reported that García still went to the office occasionally, but did not complete his full shift.

Instead, he spent his time reading philosophy books. The employee reported that he avoided reporting his situation for fear of losing his family’s livelihood and the difficulty of finding a new job at his age.

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Employee Vanishes From Work for 6 Years and Nearly Receives Tribute for Dedication

For Years, No One Noticed His Absence. A Public Employee in Spain Went Six Years Without Showing Up for Work and Was Almost Honored for His Alleged Dedication. The Case Only Came to Light When the Award Was About to Be Delivered.

Unexpected Discovery

Position Without Duties

Lack of Clear Supervision

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Employee Vanishes From Work for 6 Years and Nearly Receives Tribute for Dedication

For Years, No One Noticed His Absence. A Public Employee in Spain Went Six Years Without Showing Up for Work and Was Almost Honored for His Alleged Dedication. The Case Only Came to Light When the Award Was About to Be Delivered.

Unexpected Discovery

Position Without Duties

Lack of Clear Supervision

Libya built over 4,000 kilometers of underground pipelines to bring water from the Sahara to coastal cities in a project that the government itself called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Desert sand, previously discarded for being too smooth for concrete, becomes an ecological brick in the United Arab Emirates, dispensing with Portland cement, curing at room temperature, and attempting to transform dunes useless for construction into raw material for a new arid engineering.

Chinese woman planted trees for decades while sand buried part of her house, received $5,000 from an American in 1999, and helped transform the desert into a forest of 8 million trees in China.

Almost 6,000 residents live concentrated along a single street nearly 9 km long in the interior of Poland. Houses form a continuous row, and behind them, narrow agricultural strips emerge, creating one of the most unusual rural patterns in Europe.

In the cold desert of Ladakh, where it hardly rains, engineer Sonam Wangchuk created the ice stupa, a tower that freezes winter water and stores it for irrigating crops in the spring, a simple engineering feat that mimics nature.

Described by astronauts as one of the most unlikely natural phenomena on Earth, the Okavango Delta spreads over up to 15,000 square kilometers in the middle of the desert and transforms Botswana into a living labyrinth of channels, islands, and flooded areas.

Two helicopters, 41 people, and over 38 tons of bait were mobilized on a remote Pacific atoll to eliminate rats; five years later, native trees grew by 5,000%, seabirds gained habitat, and the rainforest began to regenerate.

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