Spain

Summary

ODA Spending

How much ODA does Spain contribute?

Spain’s ODA was US$3.9 billion in 2023, making it the 12^th-largest OECD DAC donor in absolute terms. This amount made up 0.24% of Spain’s GNI, putting the country in the 23^nd place in relative terms.

How is Spanish ODA changing?

Spain’s ODA declined by more than half between 2010-2015 due to major budgetary adjustments as a result of the ‘Great Recession,’ the global financial crisis that particularly hit Spain and Southern European countries. ODA spending has since rebounded in line with Spain’s economic recovery and thanks to a renewed political commitment of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s administration.

On February 9, 2023, the Spanish Congress of Deputies approved the new Law for Sustainable Development Cooperation and Global Solidarity with the support of all parliamentary groups except for the extreme right. It includes, for the first time in Spain’s history, the objective of increasing ODA to 0.7% of the country’s GNI by 2030. Such a target for development spending, if it were reached in 2023, would set Spain’s ODA at US$11.3 billion.

To pave the way for the 0.7% ODA/GNI target, the new law sets the groundwork for a strong modernization of the Spanish development system. It seeks to deeply reform the Spanish development agency, AECID, which will gain power in terms of decision-making and agenda-setting for Spain’s development priorities. Other development-related instruments and units, such as the FONPRODE , which will now be called FEDES, and the General Directorate for Sustainable Development Policies, will also be reformed.

In light of the government's decision to renounce the 2024 budget approval, the 2023 state budget continued to apply in 2024. Similarly, for the time being the Spanish government has not managed to pass the annual budget for 2025 and the old budget for 2023 continues in place. As a result, despite the intentions of PM Sánchez’ administration, Spain’s ODA for 2024 and 2025 are expected to remain at the same level as 2023. Spain's 0.7% ODA/GNI target may be more difficult to achieve due to the budgetary effects of the decision.

The 4^th International Conference on Financing for Development will take place in Sevilla, Spain, between June 30 and July 3, 2025, offering an excellent platform to shape international finance institutions in the road to achieving the SDGs by 2030, as well as for Spain to champion global efforts in support of development cooperation.

Where is Spanish ODA allocated?

During the economic turmoil between 2008-2013, Spain channeled an increasing share of its ODA through core, obligatory contributions to multilateral organizations. During this period, however, Spain’s voluntary contributions to multilateral institutions almost disappeared. As Spain’s economy has recovered, it has continued to channel most of its ODA to multilaterals and has now increased voluntary contributions, with 60% multilateral in 2023.

Bilateral Spending

In 2023, IDRCs received the largest funding share of Spain's bilateral ODA. Funding to emergency response rose significantly in 2023, while funding to health and populations fell.

13% of bilateral ODA was provided to the ‘government and civil society’ sector, which focuses on gender equality and democratic participation, in accordance with the cross-cutting themes set out in the Master Plan 2019-2025.

Spain has a strong focus on development cooperation with UMICs and LMICs. This focus curbs its support to LICs. Cooperation with UMICs and LMICs is focused on fostering triangular partnerships, concessional disbursements, climate change and rural development, as well as the provision of global public goods.

Top recipients of Spanish ODA are typically MICs in Latin America. In 2023, this included Colombia and El Salvador. However, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were the top recipients of Spain's bilateral ODA in 2023.

Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the Sahel region, is another geographic priority of Spain’s development policy, as underlined in the new law on Cooperation for Sustainable Development and Global Solidarity. Spain aims to prioritize traditional ODA disbursements, mostly in the form of grants, to support the provision of basic social services and institution strengthening in this region.

In March 2019, the Spanish Foreign Ministry approved an ‘Africa Plan,’ aimed at strengthening Spain’s foreign relations with the region, not only via ODA but also through private investments and new sources for sustainable development finance.

Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania are priority countries according to Spain’s ‘Africa Plan.’

In July 2024, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation released the new Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2024-2027 which outlines strategic priorities of Spain’s development spending. The following regions and countries are earmarked as geographic priorities by the Master Plan:

• Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
• Sub-Saharan Africa: Cabo Verde, Senegal, Niger, Mali, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique.
• Northern Africa and Middle East: Morocco, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and Libya.
• Asia: Philippines.

Within its bilateral funding, Spain channels much of its ODA through NGOs and CSOs including secular and Catholic NGOs and think tanks. These organizations play an important role in Spain’s development cooperation.

Multilateral Spending and Commitments

Spain’s voluntary contributions to multilateral organizations were severely constrained following the recession of 2008. However, contributions are returning to previous levels, driven by the current Spanish government’s strong focus on multilateralism and learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2024-2027 underlines that a new multilateral strategy will be approved in 2025. Spain prioritizes contributions to UN agencies. In September 2024, at UNGA79, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced an increase of 25% of Spain’s disbursements to UN-related organizations.

According to the Master Plan 2024-2027, Spain’s multilateral priorities include gender equality, children rights, LGBT rights, democratic institutions, climate adaptation and climate mitigation, global health, and food security.

Recent commitments to key multilateral organizations are summarized below.

Politics & Priorities

What is the current state of Spanish politics?

Spain is a parliamentary monarchy in which the monarch, King Felipe VI, is the head of state and the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is the head of government. Spain is a highly decentralized country; therefore, sub-national state actors such as autonomous regions, local administrations, and universities also provide ODA.

Spain has a multi-party system but for the last four decades, the social-democratic PSOE and the conservative People’s Party have received the most support and have been ruling the country alternately. Through a system of proportional representation, Spanish citizens elect Members of the Congress of Deputies approximately every four years. The party with the largest number of seats – or the one that manages to gather a majority support from MPs – then forms the government. Spain has had minority governments since the June 2016 elections, which have affected governability. Minority governance has resulted in a few episodes of political stalemate and instability, and the Parliament has held greater influence over development policy as well as the ODA budget.

On October 24, 2023, as a result of the general elections held in July 2023, the PSOE and left-wing ‘Sumar’ alliance announced an agreement to form a new progressive coalition government, with key priorities including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, increasing Spanish development finance according to 0.7% ODA/GNI by 2030, and making Spain a global leader on feminist policies.

Prime Minister and PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez is poised to continue as head of government until the end of the current term of office in 2027. The Spanish parliament inducted him as prime minister before November 17, 2023. The new coalition cabinet is a renewed version of the same cabinet that governed from 2020-2023.

Sánchez positioned multilateralism, gender equality, and development cooperation as cornerstones of Spain’s foreign policy. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain announced that global health and epidemic preparedness will be top priorities going forward.

The Spanish government plans to overcome the existing institutional deficiencies and weaknesses of Spain’s cooperation system by following a more robust and efficient structure. While the new law for sustainable development reaffirms the MAEC and its State Secretariat for International Cooperation as the administrative bodies in charge of formulating Spain’s development policy, it implies an important administrative reform of its development agency. The AECID will gain power in terms of defining strategic priorities and providing multilateral contributions, and most of the civil servants working at DGPOLDES are expected to be shuffled to the agency. The law also seeks to modernize the Spanish disbursements of loans and equity investments, with the objective of avoiding administrative bottlenecks and high levels of underspending. To this aim, the former FONPRODE will be substituted by the new FEDES which will accrue more administrative power to make financial contributions.

Spanish civil society, which includes secular and faith-based NGOs and think tanks, plays a key role in development cooperation. Although NGOs have lost some of their influence in recent years, the level of NGOs’ inclusion in policy dialogue remains high, both through bilateral platforms and MAEC’s Council for Development Cooperation. Prominent organizations include Spain’s main civil society umbrella organization for development cooperation, la Coordinadora, ISGlobal, Oxfam Intermón, Salud por Derecho, UNICEF Spain, and the global affairs think tank Elcano Royal Institute.

Spain held the presidency of the Council of the EU from July to December 2023. Spain's motto for the presidency was 'Europe, closer', encouraging closer cooperation between EU countries. The Spanish Council Presidency also highlighted EU cooperation with LAC countries, hosting the 3^rd EU-CELAC Summit in July 2023, with a focus on key political areas such as gender equality.

Who is responsible for allocating Spanish ODA?

What are Spain's development priorities?

Under the new Law on Cooperation for Sustainable Development Cooperation and Global Solidarity, Spain is expected to focus its development cooperation efforts on tackling inequality, poverty, and environmental crises as well as defending gender equality, human rights, and democracy.

Geographically, the new law outlines the Sahel region as a top priority in addition to SSA, with a special focus on Portuguese-speaking countries, and Latin America. In terms of sectors and issues, while it emphasizes the principles of ecological transition and gender equality, global public goods such as global health, including MNCH and SRHR, rural development, and food security are also specifically outlined.

The Spanish government has outlined its strategic orientations for development in the Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2024-2027, which emphasizes Spain’s commitment to advancing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. On occasion of the publication of the new Master Plan, the AECID leadership outlined three core priorities for Spain’s development policy: global health, gender equality, and climate change with a special focus on climate adaptation.

Read more about Spain’s ODA to Gender Equality

Read more about Spain’s ODA to Climate

Another key objective outlined in the Master Plan 2024-2027 is for increasing Spain’s ODA in order to achieve the 0.7 target by 2030, as underlined in the new Law for Sustainable Development. To this aim, the plan provides three different scenarios for Spain’s ODA spending during the period 2024-2027; according to it, in 2027 Spain’s ODA will reach to a) 0.4% of GNI; b) 0.45% of GNI; or c) 0.55% of GNI.

Spain’s sectorial priorities are outlined in the Master Plan 2024-2027 within three areas of intervention:

1. Social transition a. Democratic governance; b. Global health and health systems; c. Food security; d. Equative, inclusive and quality education; e. Gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment; and f. Culture and development.

2. Climate transition a. Fight against climate change; b. Access to green energies; c. Biodiversity; and d. Water and sanitation.

3. Economic transition a. Rural development; b. Inclusive economic development; and c. Digitalization.

In December 2024, on the other hand, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation released the new Spain-Africa Strategy 2025-2028 designed to strengthen Spanish links with the African continent, consolidating diplomatic relations, promoting private sector investments and fostering sustainable development in partner countries. With a particular focus on West and North Africa, this new strategy pursues to generate greater Spanish involvement in new sources for financing for development and debt relief, to increase peacekeeping operations, and to strengthen development cooperation programs among other objectives.

Read more about Spain’s ODA to Agriculture

Read more about Spain’s ODA to Education

Spain’s Foreign Action Strategy 2021-2024, approved in January 2021, prioritizes strengthening its external development cooperation. The strategy underlines key priority areas or ‘axes’ for Spain’s development cooperation efforts. This includes ‘vertical’ measures for:

• Tackling extreme poverty by fostering nutrition, water and sanitation, and global health;
• Addressing the negative effects of climate change;
• Fostering global education; and
• Promoting socio-economic development.

The strategy also set out ‘horizontal’ axes, including:

• Deploying a feminist development cooperation plan;
• Protecting human rights;
• Strengthening humanitarian assistance; and
• Developing innovative public-private partnerships.

By issue

Global Health: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain announced that it would prioritize global health and epidemic preparedness within its development cooperation policy. In July 2021, the MAEC approved the Spanish Cooperation Strategy to Respond to COVID-19, which outlined measures to support LICs in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, including supporting HSS and equitable immunization campaigns, fostering education and food security, and guaranteeing universal access to public goods in several regions including countries in SSA, MENA, and Latin America.

Read more about Spain’s ODA to Global Health

By region

Spain allocates bilateral funding based on the strategic, regional, and thematic priorities established in the four-year Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation. According to the 2018-2021 Master Plan, the government reduced the number of priority countries from 50 in 2013 to 21 in 2021, of which seven were LICs and 14 MICs.

To increase ODA predictability, Spain uses MAPs for its priority countries. MAPs specify sector priorities and provide estimated annual budget allocations. These are developed jointly by AECID, partner countries, and local CSOs.

In addition to MAPs, Spain plans to develop ‘New Generation Partnerships’, or ANGs, with some of its traditional ODA recipients that have progressed to UMIC status. These partner countries include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay, and Tunisia.

The Spanish government’s renewed focus on countries in SSA – as outlined in the new Law for Sustainable Development and the Master Plan 2024-2027 – suggests that Spain’s geographic focus could shift from Latin America to countries in Africa, particularly focusing on Portuguese-speaking countries, West Africa, and the Sahel region. Spain hosted that Africa Spain Cooperation Summit in July 2023, bringing together public and private sector actors to explore opportunities for closer cooperation between Spain and African countries.

MAEC, responsible for setting the strategic orientation of Spanish development policy, seeks to progressively substitute traditional development funding to MICs with new models of development cooperation, including blended finance, equity investments, and knowledge transfer programs.

Budget

What are the details of Spain's ODA budget?

On March 13, 2024, just a few hours after snap elections were announced to be held in the Catalonia region by mid-May 2024, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that his cabinet renounced its approval of the 2024 general state budget. Sánchez’s minority government, which relies on several political parties, including Catalan and Basque secessionist parties, to pass key laws such as the annual state budget, did not even try to pass the 2024 budget bill in parliament.

The 2023 state budget continued to apply in 2024. Spain’s ODA spending for 2024 is therefore slated to remain roughly at the same level as 2023.

In turn, the Spanish administration has not yet presented the budget bill for 2025, and the 2023 general state budget, including for ODA spending estimates, will continue to apply in 2025 unless the government presents a new budget before June 2025.

The 2023 budget sets Spain’s ODA at EUR4.4 billion ( US$4.6 billion), or 0.34% of the country’s GNI in 2023 – a share that will be certainly reduced given the significant increase of Spain’s GNI between 2023 and 2025. This budget represented a 10% increase compared to ODA spending in 2022.

What are the sources of Spain's ODA?

In Spain, ODA management is relatively fragmented, as all ministries account for their own development-related budget. MAEC used to be Spain’s primary ODA provider, but its share has decreased due to budget cuts. MINHAFP now manages the largest share of Spain’s ODA budget, 29.6% in 2023, as it channels the country’s mandatory contributions to the EU. Other significant ministries include the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digitalization. Spanish regions, municipalities, and universities also disburse a small amount of Spain’s development spending.

MAEC’s budget for 2023, EUR1.1 billion ( US$1.2 billion) increased by EUR210 million ( US$221 million) compared to its budget for 2022.

The general state budget for 2023 also accounted for an ODA-related envelope for the Spanish Ministry of Health, which was used for purchasing COVID-19 vaccines for low- and middle -income partner countries. Spain’s funding for refugees and asylum seekers in-country is counted as ODA and is managed by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration.

How does Spain determine its ODA budget?

ODA levels and main funding lines are typically decided between March and July.