According to the report, 2025 will be the year in history with the largest budget allocation for development cooperation by autonomous communities, amounting to €334.4 million, €8.7 million more than in 2024. Autonomous collaborationthe Coordinator of the Spanish Agency for Development analyzes the 2025 local budget in this context. However, the report’s authors caution that this growth is highly uneven when focusing on individual regions. While Catalonia and the Basque Country are increasing the investments allocated to this chapter, Andalusia is the region with the most cuts, with 13.54% last year, adding to “several consecutive years of large-scale cuts”, according to a document presented this Friday in the Andalusian Parliament.
Andalucía is the autonomous community that has cut its official development assistance (ODA) budget the most over the past seven years, during the period of the military PP government, and in both cases the proportion has gone from 0.14% in 2018 to 0.04% in 2025. The annual volatility was -17.23% last year alone. As well as in absolute terms, the budget was reduced from €47.3 million in 2018 to €18.8 million in 2025, but this reduction is even more remarkable given that the regional balance only increased during the same period. “The lack of ODA funding is not due to economic reasons, but rather reflects how it relates to a lack of political will,” the report concludes.
“As we witness a real international drama, in the context of war, escalating conflict and inflation, this reduction is all the more alarming and contrary to Andalusia’s obligation of autonomy law to be a people of unity. We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of development aid,” warns Patricia Sánchez, President of the ONGD Andalusia Coordinator, who took part in the presentation of the report at a regional meeting this morning. Parliament.
For Sanchez, this “setback” in ODA investment has to do with “a question of the Andalusian government’s priorities.” This is a conclusion he reached in recent years, first after talks with Antonio Sanz, the current Minister of Health, Presidency and Emergencies. He has now relied on the Ministry of Social Inclusion, Youth, Families and Equality, which until last year depended on for development aid, and also held talks with Secretary Lores López. “These sectors have many fronts, many powers, many social agents, and there is cooperation, but the budgets are not increasing,” Sanchez said.
After seven years of continuous cuts, the amount allocated in the 2026 budget, which was debated this Wednesday, remains frozen at $18.9 million. “This is a hidden reduction, because this item does not increase in proportion to the growth of the local consolidated budget. This is once again a record,” Sanchez said, noting that next year’s local accounts will increase by 5.6%, reaching a total of 51,597 million euros.
“We are very frustrated,” summed up the president of ONGD’s Andalusia Coordinator, recalling that this percentage increase was part of the Master Plan for Development Cooperation, which was approved only last July. Mr. Sanchez also drew attention to the fact that just this summer, Seville hosted the United Nations’ Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development. “So we have heard many heads of state and the president of the Andalusian government speak about the importance of development cooperation. That is why the fact that the amount was not increased this year is outrageous for us, to say the least,” Sánchez added.
far-right threat
Andalusia is also not doing well when comparing the amount of investment now with the amount invested just before the Great Recession, when the largest amount of funds were allocated to ODA. While La Rioja, the Basque Country and Catalonia exceeded their pre-crisis numbers, Andalusia was the region with the largest reduction of 80.5 million people compared to 2009, far ahead of Castilla-La Mancha (42.4 million) and Madrid (34.1). Moreno’s community has the third lowest allocation of aid per inhabitant, at 2.15 euros per resident, ahead of Madrid and Murcia (0.68 euros each) and Castilla-La Mancha (1.87 euros). In 2024, the average was 8.49 euros per person.
The report warns that despite an overall increase in the budget for cooperation and development, the share remains far from the target of 0.7%. The Basque Country is the community closest to that value at 0.35%, while Madrid and Aragon are at the bottom at 0.02% and Murcia at 0.01%. However, it also warned that this budget increase stalled last year, at 2.33%, a far cry from the 14.33% growth that occurred between 2020 and 2021. The Coordinator warns of how far-right infiltration and its anti-immigration and anti-multilateralism policies are undermining the decentralized aid system. “This has led to cuts and development cooperation that are highly conditional on other benefits,” the document says.
In this sense, Mr. Sánchez warns about the agreement between the PP and Vox to approve the 2025 budget in the Seville City Council, the capital that is well represented in the report in terms of the amount allocated to ODA. “The report in this case analyzes the 2024 accounts (extended from the previous municipal accounts designed by the PSOE) and maintains a high percentage, so it appears to be good practice, but if the photo has been changed it will be on record,” he suggested. The city budget project for 2026 includes a reduction of 60,000 euros to foreign cooperation. “In 2025, we were not able to get many development cooperation items because it was a semi-annual contract. We will take that into account in 2026,” Box warned the Seville city government this summer that the popular ones were ruling with a minority.
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