The Ministry of Transport has awarded more than 1.48 million to the Cantabrian municipalities of Santander (1.31 million); Torrelavega (85,681 euros) and Castro Urdiales (87,510 euros) to finance urban public transport.
In total, Transportes has granted, with this objective, more than 51 million to 87 municipalities, including the three Cantabrians.
The Ministry has published the resolution granting and initiating the transfer of funds to municipalities, from the General State Budgets, extended by 2024.
These subsidies are granted on a competitive basis to municipalities that have the aforementioned transport service, regardless of the form of management, provided that they meet the following requirements: having a Sustainable Mobility Plan; having more than 50,000 inhabitants of law; having more than 20,000 inhabitants of law, provided that the number of urban units registered in the urban real estate cadastre is greater than 36,000, or municipalities that, although having a lower number of inhabitants of law, are provincial capitals.
The exception is those municipalities that, in compliance with the above requirements, participate in an alternative financing system that has funds from the General Administration of the State, such as the transport of the Canary Islands, the Regional Transport Consortium of Madrid, the Metropolitan Transport Authority of Barcelona and the Metropolitan Transport Authority of Valencia, which benefit from the nominative subsidies provided for this purpose in the Law of General Budgets of the State. The latter were also resolved for the year 2024.
The granting of these grants, from the General State Budgets, is part of the change of approach that consolidates the Ministry as manager of mobility, understood as a citizen’s right and an element of social cohesion, economic growth, decarbonization and the fight against climate change in our country.
Thus, since 2021, the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility manages both the nominative subsidies to consortiums and metropolitan transport authorities, and the grants for competitive competition in favor of Local Entities to finance urban collective transport services, which until 2020 were being managed by the Ministry of Finance.