THE SECOND TAX AUTHORITY ALSO DECLARED HIM "ABSENT"

While the complaint got under way in the courts, the provincial inspection opened in the fortnight of November 2013 ran its course. It did so, from start to finish, without its protagonist.

The document in which the Provincial Tax Authority of Bizkaia itself summarises the procedure (A.7) says it with astonishing matter-of-factness: the actions began on 6-12-2013 — with "notification by gazette on 20-11-2013 on account of being absent" — and ended on 10-10-2014 "without your having appeared at any time". Result: a debt of 149,048.82 euros, settled in full behind the taxpayer's back.

Three clarifications the file itself allows. First: the "absent" man of 2013 had filed his income tax return before that same provincial authority (A.65) and collected a VAT refund from it (A.43). Second: in October 2014, the date of the supposed "home delivery" that closes the procedure, Apolozan had finished the Sopelana work more than a year earlier and did not reside in Bizkaia — and the administration provides no signed acknowledgement of receipt nor specifies the delivery address. Third: he learned of this debt in 2016, when he claimed his VAT and received document A.7 in reply.

The same technique the AEAT was using from Alicante — the declared absence of someone perfectly locatable — now appeared in a second administration. When two independent machineries produce the same fiction about the same man, the word "error" begins to fall short.