The Government will allocate 530 million euros to develop technological projects with the Autonomous Communities.

The Executive will approve this Saturday aid to video games that experiment with the metaverse or web3

July 8. () –

The First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, stated this Friday at the ‘Digital Spain 2026’ event that the Government will allocate 530 million euros between 2022 and 2023 to develop technological projects with the autonomous communities through ‘Retech’.

Calviño explained that the project is intended to promote the Territorial Networks of Technological Specialization and to articulate projects proposed by the communities that have not had a place in the Pertes.

The projects within this initiative, announced after the last Council of Ministers, may be co-financed by the communities, which would contribute an additional investment to that of the Government, and, depending on their success, could increase their financing with the addendum to the Recovery Plan .

Likewise, the Official State Gazette (BOE) will approve this Saturday aid of between 150,000 and one million euros for SMEs and freelancers with innovative projects in the audiovisual field or video games that plan to use new technologies such as the metaverse and Web3.

Calviño has also announced that the Executive will begin to “dialogue” next week with the Community of Madrid to locate the headquarters of the National Center for Neurotechnology, one of the Government’s key projects in the field of artificial intelligence, in the capital.

This project, submitted to a public consultation during the month of May, will have a budget of 40 million euros from the ‘Next Generation’ funds for its implementation. In the consultation, the autonomous communities were invited to present their proposals to attract this network.

Previously, an expression of interest for the industry had also been launched, which registered “wide interest”, according to the Government.

NEW PROGRAMS ON THE HORIZON

Calviño has highlighted other programs that will come out in the near future, such as the new edition of the Digital Kit, the program to digitize SMEs, which he “hopes” will be published before the end of the month.

The first vice-president has underlined that approximately 18,000 companies have already benefited from the program in the group of companies between 10 and 50 employees. “It is a very good sign that SMEs want to jump on the bandwagon of this new digital economy,” she assured.

In addition, it has underlined that the Government has already transferred to the autonomous communities the allocation to launch the digital skills plan, while it has established autumn as the reference time for the deployment of the main programs at the national level of this plan.

In this section, he stressed that RTVE will have a “special role” and that programs will be launched to train managers and digital specialists.

‘CITIZEN FOLDER’ TO CARRY OUT PROCEDURES ON THE INTERNET

Finally, it has also announced that “soon” a ‘citizen folder’ pilot will be launched so that citizens can carry out their procedures and keep track of them from their mobile, and the process will be opened to choose the headquarters of the next agency of supervision of artificial intelligence, which will be outside of Madrid.

Next week, the first vice president plans to develop these plans and discuss them with local communities and entities during the Sectoral Conference for Digital Transformation.

During his speech, Calviño underlined the Government’s commitment to accelerating the deployment of digital infrastructure and halving the connectivity gap between the city and rural areas.

SPAIN, AT THE HEAD OF EUROPEAN FUNDS

After Calviño, the executive vice president of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager, intervened on video and highlighted that Spain continues to be “at the forefront” of the application of the recovery plans.

Vestager has highlighted the “ambition” in terms of digitization of the Executive and has underlined the importance of digitizing small and medium-sized companies.

Thus, he has also emphasized the relevance of the 5G Cybersecurity Law to be able to veto high-risk providers in a technological race that he has predicted will be “long and complex.”

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