Foreign Ministry grants 800,000 euros to the political parties’ international cooperation programs

Eduardo González The State Secretariat for International Cooperation has called for subsidies, corresponding to 2024, to foundations and associations dependent on political parties for the realization of activities planned within the framework of the Master Plan for Cooperation. The resolution, signed on November 7 in Madrid by the State Secretary for Foreign and Global Affairs, Diego Martínez Belío, and published two days later by the Official State Gazette (BOE), establishes that the beneficiaries of these subsidies will be foundations and associations dependent on political parties with parliamentary representation at the state level. Specifically, activities that contribute to international cooperation for sustainable development, to the global promotion of democracy and to the acceleration of the implementation of the goals of the 2030 Agenda will be subsidized, in a manner aligned and coherent with the provisions of the Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation for Sustainable Development and Global Solidarity 2024-2027. These activities may include training, advice, analysis and debate actions that reinforce the contribution of these foundations and associations to the international achievement of the goals indicated, always within the framework of the promotion of the 2030 Agenda, international human rights law and the promotion of democratic, participatory and inclusive systems. The total credit for the financing of these grants amounts to 800,000 euros and the amount received by each applicant may not exceed 500,000 euros. Therefore, the same amount is maintained for 2022 and 2023 for each foundation. However, this amount is still lower than the 900,000 euros that were granted between 2012 and 2019 (except in 2016, when the then acting Government distributed around 785,000 euros among the foundations and associations of the parties). In 2020, in the first year of the pandemic, these grants were not called for. Applications will be scored taking into account both the technical assessment of the project and the total number of seats in the Congress of Deputies and the Senate held by the political party to which the foundation depends at the time of publication of this call for proposals. The percentage value resulting from the multiplication of both factors will determine the amounts that will be distributed to the beneficiary entities. In the previous call for proposals, announced in January 2024, the entity that received the most benefits was the Fundación Concordia y Libertad (formerly Fundación Humanismo y Democracia), of the PP, which obtained 498,636 euros to finance its program of institutional strengthening, democratic participation and political pluralism in Latin America and for the holding of seminars and conferences. This foundation, created in 1977 as Humanism and Democracy and which changed its name to Concordia y Libertad in 2018, has been called, since March 2023, Reformismo21, on the initiative of the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. It is directed by the former president of Renfe Pablo Vázquez. In second place was the Pablo Iglesias Foundation, of the PSOE, which received 217,824 euros for its programs to promote democracy, consolidate political party systems and international studies, visits, workshops and conferences. In third place, and at a considerable distance, was the Disenso Foundation, of Vox, which received 50,203 euros for its activities Regional Meeting, Electoral Observation and Reports “Panorama País” and “Panorama Región”. The rest of the grants went to the Rafael Campalans Foundation, linked to the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC) and chaired by the former minister and former president of the Generalitat José Montilla, which received 16,000 euros for the “15th Euromed Forum: the role of the cities on both sides of the Mediterranean in the face of the challenges of the region”; Sentit Comú, linked to the Comuns and chaired by the former minister Joan Subirats, which received 12,753 euros for the project “Cities without fear: a dialogue on the different democratic crises between Barcelona and Latin America”; and, closing the list, the Sabino Arana Foundation, of the PNV, which obtained 4,428 euros to finance the seminar “How to cooperate in a world in crisis?” and the conference “Humanitarian responses to global crises”.

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