The Diplomat
The Government will allocate almost 500,000 euros to subsidize welfare institutions that provide assistance to Spaniards in need abroad, mostly nursing homes run by religious personnel in Latin America.
According to the extract of the call for the subsidies corresponding to the year 2021, signed last May 10 by the general director of Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs, Juan Duarte Cuadrado -on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya-, the beneficiaries of these financial aids will be the private assistance institutions domiciled abroad which, on their own initiative, provide free or semi-free assistance to Spanish citizens abroad, in a state of need and lacking their own resources, “with the aim of stimulating, compensating and complementing the assistance activities of said institutions”.
The maximum total amount will be 499,000 Euros and the individual amount of each grant may not exceed 40,000 Euros. Likewise, the sum of the amounts of all the grants to be awarded to welfare institutions operating in the same country may not exceed 250,000 euros. The deadline for submitting applications is one month from the day following the publication of this extract in the Official State Gazette, which took place yesterday.
The amounts earmarked for these subsidies have remained constant since 2009, just before the outbreak of the financial crisis, when they exceeded one million euros. In general, the biggest beneficiaries tend to be nursing homes run by religious personnel in Latin America. As of January 1, 2017, 2,406,611 Spaniards residing abroad were registered, of whom 518,676 are over sixty-five years of age (238,789 men and 279,887 women), according to data from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.
According to the resolution of the call for applications, this aid must be destined “to expenses for social, health or similar assistance to these Spaniards and, exceptionally, to expenses for ordinary maintenance of the facilities that house them, and for the repair or replacement of essential elements for their assistance during the year in which the subsidies are granted”.
