The Minister of Culture and Sports, Patricia del Pozo, has reported to the Parliament of Andalusia that this year more than 8.1 million euros in aid have been announced for Andalusian sports federations and entities, covering everything from high performance to grassroots sports. «With these calls, we collaborate with those who day by day encourage, stimulate, and support Andalusian athletes in their training and sports progress,» she pointed out.
The first of these lines of aid focuses on promoting sports practice by financially supporting the participation expenses of Andalusian teams in official national competitions, non-professional and absolute category, at the highest and submaximum levels. The call was published in the Official Gazette of the Junta de Andalucía (BOJA) on April 1st, and as Del Pozo mentioned, «the 133 applications received are already being studied and evaluated.»
Clubs, sections, and anonymous sports companies registered in the Andalusian Register of Sports Entities can benefit from these aids to cover the costs derived from the use of sports facilities for training and competition, registration in competitions, travel, accommodation and subsistence, refereeing, sports equipment and material, material repairs, medical services, and sports licenses. The amount allocated to this call amounts to 1.1 million euros.
In addition to this, there is the call for subsidies, published on March 27th in the BOJA, for the promotion of management, technification, and sports performance of Andalusian sports federations, with a budget of over seven million euros. This is, as the minister explained, a «very important amount that we have maintained after having raised it by almost 23% since 2019,» for which the 60 applications received are already being evaluated.
The beneficiaries of these aids, which are the Andalusian sports federations registered in the Andalusian Register of Sports Entities, can present as eligible expenses the organization of activities for school-age sports categories and absolute or lower categories that are older than that age, the participation of athletes, technical staff, judges or referees in these activities, and the management and operation expenses of the federations.
In this way, the Andalusian Government supports federations in the organization of Andalusian championships and official regional competitions, as well as Spanish championships and national competitions, official international competitions, and Andalusian concentrations of selected athletes. Therefore, as Del Pozo commented, the Ministry of Culture and Sports aims to «help our athletes and contribute to the technification of training and the improvement of their sports performance.»