The Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council is reinforcing its commitment to international solidarity and cooperation. In 2025, through the Municipal Service for Development Cooperation, 3.4 million euros were allocated to finance 61 cooperation projects. These initiatives have been developed in collaboration with social organizations and focus on areas such as the defense of Human Rights, access to water and education, poverty eradication, and the promotion of gender equity.
Municipal aid is channeled through international cooperation projects, awareness and development education initiatives, responses to emergency situations, programs for hosting Sahrawi children, and actions to promote fair trade. In 2025, these initiatives had a presence in 18 countries, including Colombia, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guinea Conakry, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Honduras, and Peru, in addition to three emergency interventions in Palestine.
The contribution from the Vitoria council is added to that of other Basque public institutions, which collectively invested 91.67 million euros in 1,278 initiatives across 68 countries. These were managed by 242 Basque NGOs and 374 entities from recipient countries, as detailed in the 2025 Basque Public Cooperation Report.
The document also analyzes, for the fourth consecutive year, the contribution of Basque public cooperation institutions to the 2030 Agenda. The main contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were directed towards gender equality (SDG 5, at 30.92%), peace, justice, and strong institutions (SDG 16, at 18.02%), and zero hunger (SDG 2, at 8.71%).
By modality, of the 91.67 million euros disbursed, 61.57% was allocated to international development cooperation initiatives, 18.01% to humanitarian and emergency action to support populations in crisis, and 13.03% to education projects for social transformation.
The Basque Public Cooperation Portal is an inter-institutional initiative involving eLankidetza-Basque Agency for Cooperation and Solidarity of the Basque Government, the three provincial councils, the city councils of the three Basque capitals, the Zarautz City Council, and the Association of Basque Cooperating Local Entities-Euskal Fondoa. The Hegoa Institute of the Basque public university supports this initiative.
