Final voting in the participatory budgets from 12 to 17 May
The people of Barcelona are encouraged to take part in the final voting stage of the participatory budgets from 12 to 17 May. City residents will be able to directly decide which investments will be made in the neighbourhoods from 2025 to 2027, choosing from 237 projects put forward by local people and which have successfully made it through the previous validation stages.
People aged 14 and over and officially residing in Barcelona will be able to choose the final projects on the decidim.barcelona website or at more than 230 face-to-face points. Participants can vote for the projects they prefer for their district of residence and for a second district of their choosing. Each person will have to vote for at least two projects until reaching the maximum budget per district.
Each city district has a budget available which ranges from 2 to 3.8 million euros, with an overall total of 30 million euros distributed between districts and their neighbourhoods according to criteria such as income, the number of inhabitants and surface area.
The 239 final projects include projects to improve education facilities, enlarge pedestrian spaces, renew parks and gardens, improve sports facilities and revamp children’s play areas.
The final projects have successfully made it through the different stages of technical validation, public support and definition. Working meetings were held in March and April with each team behind the projects prioritised by the public, to discuss the different factors and define the details and final amount needed. Of all the projects prioritised, 14 did not make it through the defining stage for various reasons, such as the project was already planned by the City Council, the technical factors significantly altered the original proposal, the project didn’t want to compete with other similar ones, the cost of the project was too high or too low or in the end it didn’t cover all the established points of there was some sort of technical incompatibility identified in the definition stage. Specific details on the projects withdrawn can be found on the website decidim.barcelona.
To promote children’s participation in the process, ten children’s forums were held, one per district, with 716 children between the ages of 8 and 13 voting and deciding which two projects per district should go directly into the final vote.
UPDATE: This news item was updated on 8 May with the overall number of final projects rising from the 237 announced initially and including a further two in L’Eixample: the improvement to the area around the Escola Ferran Sunyer and the proposal “Recuperem Els Xamfrans”, bringing the total number of accepted project to 239.
