Available funding in Spain

Background information

Funding opportunities for upskilling and reskilling to support the digital competences of individuals and organizations are available in the form of loans, grants and financial instruments. For the period 2021 – 2026, most of the activities in digital transformation are financed through Recovery and Resilience facility (RRF) but also as activities in Horizon, Erasmus+, ESIF and EEA grant schemes. You may find more on the page of the Spanish National Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition.

Recovery and resilience facility 

Several measures outlined in Spain’s Recovery and Resilience Plan support the acquisition of digital skills, especially for employees of SMEs. Those measures, together with other technology-specific initiatives such as cybersecurity or artificial intelligence (AI), are expected to reduce the labour market gap for ICT specialists as well as the ICT gender gap. Spain’s recovery and resilience plan supports the digital transition with investments in the digitalisation of the public administration, digital skills and digital inclusion, cyber security and connectivity. It will invest €3.6 billion in digital skills training. Furthermore, the plan will invest €3.2 billion in the digital transformation of the public administration, with a special focus on the justice, health care, employment, educational and social services systems. The plan also includes €4.6 billion in investments to promote the digitalisation of industry and SMEs, investments in artificial intelligence, digitalisation of tourism and culture systems, and €4 billion to support fixed and 5G connectivity, data infrastructure and the related ecosystem.

Digital skills are one of ten axes in Digital Spain 2026 roadmap for the country's digitalization process. It includes four measures:

Development of digital skills and closing of gaps aims to digitally empower citizens and ensure digital inclusion, through a series of bottom-up initiatives organized by Autonomous Communities and Local Entities, reaching to the most digitally excluded people.
Digitalization of education is focusing on developing digital skills for compulsory education and, on the other hand, supporting the digital transformation of the educational system through the provision of devices to schools and students.
Digital skills for employment will be carried out along three actions: Digital skills training throughout working life; Training in digital skills for people in the service of public administrations; Development of digital skills for SMEs.
Boosting digital specialists includes actions for the retention and attraction of digital talent, an ambitious scholarship program will be set in motion - endowed with 120 million euros - through which it is expected to attract and retain at least 300 highly qualified digital specialists.

Measures in Digital Spain 2026 Roadmap will be mostly financed through Recovery and Resilience facility, 87.7 million are distributed in 2022.

Several portals are being established to centralize information and calls available, you may find some of them on the web page Convocatorias (Calls) database which aims to provide citizens, companies and organizations with access through a single point to the calls financed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility of the European Union that are published in various databases of the Administration General of the State. The information comes from two main sources:

La Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público (The Public Sector Contracting Platform). Tenders where the contracting authority explicitly indicated that the source of financing is the Recovery and Resilience facility.
El Sistema Nacional de Publicidad de Subvenciones y Ayudas Públicas (The National Public Subventions and Aid System). The subventions and aids that are registered by the managing bodies as calls whose financing comes from the Recovery and Resilience facility.

National funding options

Inesdi Business School launched the sixth edition of the 'Closing The Gap' Scholarships, aimed at reducing the gender gap and promoting female leadership in management positions in the digital field, as well as providing women with the necessary studies to develop business projects or applications linked to the digital environment, helping them to improve their professional career. The Closing The Gap program offers a total of 10 scholarships that cover 100% of the tuition fee for any of the school's programs.