The deadline for voting on the 2026 Participatory Budget proposals is today

The Department of Citizen Participation of Benidorm City Council has encouraged city residents to vote for their favourite proposals for the 2026 Participatory Budget, out of the 56 registered proposals. The deadline for voting is today, September 30th, at 11:59 p.m., after the deadline opened last Thursday, August 7th. This period, Councillor Ana Pellicer stated, has allowed "all residents over 18 years of age registered in the city who wish to do so to vote for the proposals they consider most appropriate for making Benidorm even better together."

The councillor noted that this year, voting can also be done online, as in previous years, through the platform https://benidorm.governalia.es/es/, and also in person, to "provide as many options as possible for citizens to participate and choose what they believe is best for Benidorm." Pellicer noted that to vote in person, interested parties "can go to City Hall or one of the municipal administrative offices and present their ID to verify their information, as a preliminary step to voting."

"Citizens can choose from a total of 56 registered proposals, most of them related to the areas of Urban Planning, Urban Scene, and Mobility," which brings the total to 42, Pellicer stated. In addition, five other proposals were also registered related to the areas of Tourism, Beaches, and Citizen Safety; six related to Education, Culture, Youth, and Sports; and three related to the Environment and Street Cleaning. All of these proposals can still be viewed on the Citizen Participation portal and also at locations designated for in-person voting.

Furthermore, Pellicer emphasised that "this participatory process, once again, has generated significant interest among Benidorm residents, reaching 576 proposals submitted during the idea presentation phase." These 576 proposals, he added, "were ultimately reduced to 56, as many of them were duplicates or contained similar proposals, so they were summarised to facilitate and make voting more effective, avoiding duplication."

“Since 2016, we have made this powerful tool, the Participatory Budget, available to the public. Through this tool, citizens determine which actions or projects should receive at least 5% of the investment budget,” stated the head of Citizen Participation. She also specified that this initiative “has produced such interesting projects as children's play areas in the parks of l'Aigüera and Elche, the footbridge that connects the Els Tolls neighborhood with the Palau d'Esports, the roundabout on Avenida Ricardo Bayona, the adaptation of the old road workers' house on Via Emilio Ortuño as an exhibition center, the new park located on Avenida Marina Alta, improvements to sports facilities, and the expansion of the swimming channel at Poniente Beach.

Therefore, she once again encouraged citizens “to be an active part of this process and vote for the proposals they find most interesting among all those presented because they still have all day today to do so.” do so."

Starting tomorrow, a technical committee will be in charge of evaluating and prioritising actions based on the distributive justice criteria included in the bases of the Self-Regulation of the Participatory Budget 2026. Thus, priority will be given to actions that contribute to meeting the basic needs of the population (water, electricity, security, education, civic coexistence, etc.); that help reduce social inequality (gender, income, ethnicity, or due to physical or mental disability); those that meet environmental sustainability criteria (counting on nearby, renewable, decentralized, and self-sufficient resources); those that benefit a larger percentage of the population; or those in which no investment has been made before or has not been sufficiently invested.

Subsequently, the proposals will be subject to a technical and economic feasibility report by the City Council's technical staff, starting with the highest-scoring proposal and up to the maximum authorised spending limit. If any of the proposals is not technically viable, "it will be It will be included in another list, and the next most voted proposal will be selected from the final prioritisation list."

Finally, the proposals approved in accordance with the Self-Regulations will be submitted to the Mayor's Office for processing, according to the order of priority resulting from the selection process. Those projects that do not require a public tender or specific technical project, or public exhibition will be executed in the budgeted year.