Badajoz (province)
Project name: Participa Diputación Badajoz
Biggest of all
The province of Badajoz is the largest of Spain's 50 provinces, covering 21,766 square kilometers stretching from the Portuguese border to the province of Toledo, which borders the capital, Madrid. Badajoz, like much of rural Spain, has a relatively aging population.
The Badajoz Provincial Council is the local government that covers the entire province, except for the largest cities: Badajoz, Zafra, and Mérida. Historically, citizen participation has been widely implemented in Badajoz, but until 2019, it has mainly been an in-person thing, without any digital tools to make the process easier.
In 2019, the province of Badajoz began working directly with the municipality of Madrid which had developed the Consul platform a few years earlier.
Pandemic
However, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that provided the final push. The provincial administration aimed to implement emergency support and financing policies for municipalities and businesses in Badajoz, but first it needed to accurately assess the needs of its citizens.
This urgency was compounded by two obstacles: on the one hand, the impossibility of holding face-to-face meetings due to the pandemic; on the other, the geographical dispersion of the population in a territory as extensive as Badajoz, which made organizing physical meetings costly and inefficient.
Given this context, the implementation of the Consul platform became the most viable solution. To this end, surveys were used as a public consultation tool aimed at local councils and the business community in the province of Badajoz.
First PB
In 2022, the first Participatory Provincial Budgets were launched with a budget of €2.7 million, continuing with a second edition in 2024, which reached €3 million. The budget allocated to Participatory Budgets is divided among the 14 Territorial Delegations into which the provincial territory is divided.
The budget is divided between a general provincial budget and 14 sub-budgets for the 14 regions, the sub-provincial administrative layer of Spain.
Participation figures have steadily improved as this project has become better known among the population. In 2023, 137 proposals were submitted and 4,334 votes were cast. In 2024, fewer proposals were submitted (91), but the number of votes more than doubled to 10,704 (just under 2% of the total population of the province).
Inequality between regions
The province administration of Badajoz responsible for citizen participation observes big inequalities when it comes to resources and turnout, especially between rural and urban regions.
Public budgets, for example, are concentrated in the urban areas of (larger) municipalities. This is why the communication officials from Badajoz try to focus more on and engage rural populations.
An even bigger challenge is to reach elderly in these rural areas. Using digital tools is dificult for that group and, at the same time, it is dificult reaching them even using physical tools because the Badajoz province administration does not have representation in all of the 14 comarcas and, thus, depend on collaboration with smaller nearby municipalities, for example.
Communication
A good communication campaign is essential to ensure high participation. This has been demonstrated by the results obtained between one edition and another of the Participatory Provincial Budgets.
To this end, they have used TV ads, radio spots, posts on all social media, press conferences, publications on the Badajoz Provincial Council's institutional website, etc. This campaign has been very present throughout the entire period that each edition has been active, with special emphasis on the two key moments of citizen participation: the presentation of proposals and the voting.
Sustainable development
One feature of the Consul platform that Badajoz is using comprehensively is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals function, which allows people to add compatible SDGs to their budget proposal. This is a good option because the provincial policy known as Agenda 2030 is explicitly aligned with the SDGs, and Badajoz intends to develop and implement only projects that comply with them.
On the platform, this mindset is further expressed in the software development that the Provincial Council has carried out itself, in collaboration with the Spanish company Qraneos, which is called Baremación. During this stage, proposals receive a score based not only on the percentages of municipalities affected by the proposals, but also on their performance in terms of economic development, sustainable development, and social participation.
The maximum score is 200 points, and 50 points is the threshold for advancing to the final PB voting phase.
200 points is a full score, 50 points is the treshold to proceed to the PB final voting phase.
It's not the only thing that was developed. Badajoz also added progress tracking bars to its Consul platform, both on general, provincial and project level (see the image above).
Future plans
Currently, the Badajoz Provincial Council is continuing to work on the third edition of the Participatory Provincial Budgets with another Spanish company called Osoigo, with which it is creating a new version of the Consul platform. This will not only include Participatory Budgets, but will also add other processes such as debates, initiatives, and popular consultations.
It is even considering using the participation platform to work together with the municipalities of the province on the flagship projects resulting from its Provincial Urban Agenda through the Multi Tenancy function, which allows Consul users to replicate the platform for other trusted users within a single installation, at no additional cost.
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