The communication-public aid binomial is becoming more decisive because the funds provided by the EU are linked to the obligation on the part of the managing administrations to carry out effective social communication.

For the first time, Europe has agreed to issue public debt to deal with the consequences created by Covid-19. To this end, it has created the NextGenerationEU instrument, endowed with €809 billion, with the aim of achieving a more digitalized, sustainable and innovative EU. Among the countries that have benefited the most is Spain, which has given a leading role to its 19 regions (Autonomous Communities and Cities) in channelling and structuring the funds.

Likewise, to ensure their proper dissemination, the EU enacted the need for Member States to create a website to act as a one-stop shop. Spain created its own and urged the different regions to do the same.

Therefore, this paper explores whether regions have created a website that brings together Next Generation information and measures its quality. For this purpose, a protocol was created consisting of eight parameters and 65 indicators. The Valencian Community, Catalonia and Aragon are the regions with the best performance, while the Canary Islands, Navarre and Ceuta are the most deficient.

Keywords: Spain; communication; dissemination; web; digital communication; social media; transparency; public aid; subsidies; European funds

The coronavirus pandemic changed the course of events globally and in the European Union (EU) itself. In the latter case, despite its devastating effects, it also created opportunities for all EU Member States.

Thus, for the first time in the history of the EU, the European Council agreed to create the NextGenerationEU fund which, unlike the other European instruments, is being financed by issuing debt on the capital markets. This fund amounts to €809 billion (at 2020 prices) and during the years 2021-2026 will be aimed at creating a more digitalized, sustainable and innovative Europe, among other aspects (Escario, 2021), with Spain being one of the main beneficiaries. In order for these funds to reach potential applicants, social communication is an essential element. It is no longer enough to create effective instruments; it is essential that the population in general and potential beneficiaries in particular are aware of the different aid and subsidies available to them.

Against this backdrop, the European Union has urged its Member States to create a one-stop shop to facilitate the dissemination of these funds. In Spain, Royal Decree-Law 36/2020 (30 December 2020) introduces the urgent measures to be adopted by Public Administration to implement the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR, according to its Spanish acronym), the main programme of NextGenerationEU (Government of Spain, 2021).

The text foresees the creation of a web portal that centralizes and channels all the information on these funds and serves as a one-stop shop that provides information and facilitates the management of all the procedures for interested parties.In the case of Spain, due to the structure of its territorial organization, which is highly decentralized through the semi-federal figure known as Autonomous Communities, these, as well as the Autonomous Cities, the City Councils and the different local entities of the Spanish cities are playing a very important role in the management and distribution of these funds (Government of Spain, 2022). Therefore, the success of the call does not depend exclusively on the actions carried out by the Central Administration, but is directly linked to the web communication strategies of the Autonomous Communities

In this context, the following paper aims to carry out a case study of the web portals of the Spanish Autonomous Communities and Cities in order to measure their quality and carry out a comparative analysis of territorial differences. To our knowledge, this is the first work to explore this important issue, which is crucial to guarantee the communication of these funds and to provide the best possible distribution thereof, with the consequent decisive consequences for ensuring a more inclusive society. 

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Vilaplana-Aparicio, M. J.; Codina, L.; Martín-Llaguno, M.; Iglesias-García, M. (2025). Comunicación digital y fondos europeos NextGenerationEU: análisis de los portales web de las administraciones españolas . Revista de Comunicación, 24(1), 475–518. https://doi.org/10.26441/RC24.1-2025-3712

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