Public procurement

A public contract runs through a fixed sequence, and each stage has a word that never appears in everyday Spanish: el pliego is the paper that lays everything down, el órgano de asistencia the committee that opens the bids, and la adjudicación the point at which one of them wins. That last word is the trap. English has « adjudication », and it looks like the translation, but it means something else entirely: adjudication is what a third party does to settle a dispute, hearing both sides and deciding between them. La adjudicación settles nothing between two parties; it is the moment the buyer picks a winner, which in English is « the award ». So la propuesta de adjudicación is a proposal to award, not a proposed ruling. Two words out of the same Latin, one gone to the courts and the other to the purchasing office.