The Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility has admitted to processing the applications submitted by the municipalities of Santander, Torrelavega and Castro Urdiales to benefit from the support line that finances discounts on urban and metropolitan public transport during the second half of 2025.
This resolution represents the step prior to the final award of the grants, which the Ministry will pay from the state package of 355 million euros authorized for autonomous communities and local entities. In the case of Cantabria, the three cities already have a provisional concession of more than 9 million euros corresponding to the first half of the year.
In total, at the national level, there are 141 local, supramunicipal and autonomous communities to which the application for direct aid to public transport has been provisionally admitted for the second half of 2025.
In this way, the administrations that have requested such aid can know if they have been admitted to the procedure, and the inadmissible ones are offered the opportunity to correct the defects that have motivated their inadmission, as well as to prove the presentation of the applications in time and form.
In particular, the application of 13 Autonomous Communities and 128 municipalities, provincial councils, autonomous cities and townships to access the package of 355 million euros authorized by the Government to finance free public transport for children under 15 years of age, discounts on subscriptions and multi-travel certificates for regular travelers has been accepted for processing. Of the 355 million euros activated, 235 million euros will go to the autonomous communities and 120 million euros to local entities.
This new scheme includes three types of discounts:
· Free of charge for children up to 14 years of age (included).
· 50% reduction in the price of young subscriptions and young multi-travel titles. Each administration will define the age range that is considered young for this type of discounts.
· Discount of at least 40% on the rest of the subscriptions and multi-travel titles. In this case, the Ministry will finance 20% of the discounts as long as the competent local entities or autonomous communities undertake to finance with their own budgets a minimum discount of 20%.
Simple tickets, round trip tickets and tourist titles are excluded from this discount scheme.
In the particular case of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, an additional EUR 183 million has been made available in parallel to maintain free public transport throughout 2025, in response to its insular fact. Its procedure is managed independently of that of the other 13 applicant autonomous communities.
This aid is regulated in chapter I of title II of Royal Decree-Law 1/2025, of 28 January, approving urgent measures in the economic, transport, and social security fields, and in order to deal with situations of vulnerability, it is intended to grant financial support to the autonomous communities, local entities and supramunicipal local bodies that provide collective land, urban or interurban transport services.
Submission of allegations
In addition to the admitted applications, the announcement published today includes the list of applications not admitted for different administrative reasons, either due to non-compliance with the deadline, because they do not correspond to this procedure, because it is not possible to process them or because they are duplicated with respect to another previously validly registered application.
In addition, a period of 10 working days, from tomorrow to June 30, is allowed for the presentation of claims. In this way, the interested parties not included in the provisional list of admitted can correct the errors or defects that have motivated the inadmission, as well as certify the presentation of the application in time and form. The announcement with the lists of the administrations admitted and excluded to processing, as well as the indications to make the claims, can be consulted in this link.
Requirements to access new aids
To be a beneficiary, the autonomous communities or local entities will have to meet the following requirements:
· To have implemented in the terrestrial transport services of its competence a system of tariffs for multi-trip tickets and subscriptions, excluding round trip tickets and tourist tickets.
· To finance, from their own budgets, a discount of at least 20% on the price of subscriptions and multi-travel titles other than children and youth.
· Local entities with a legal obligation to have a Low Emissions Zone (ZBE) - municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants or more than 20,000 that exceed certain pollution thresholds - must have a ZBE already effectively implemented, or commit to have it during 2025.
To consider the implementation of the ZBE effective, it will be necessary to have a current municipal regulation and application that establishes the legal delimitation of the ZBE and its regulation; as well as measures of prohibitions or restrictions on access, circulation and parking of vehicles, according to the polluting potential of the vehicles.
In addition, it will be necessary to have a system of access control, monitoring and follow-up, and an active sanctioning regime, excluding for this consideration the system of warnings that may have been previously contemplated.
Likewise, the autonomous communities and local entities have the obligation to “communicate to the user of the transport services information that the implemented discounts have funding from the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility” and that “all communication or dissemination activities on the implementation of the discounts must expressly and easily visible include that they receive funding from the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, and will include the specific logo”, as stated in article 14 of Royal Decree Law 1/2025 and the fourth point of the resolution.