Roquetas de Mar celebrates Europe’s Day

Roquetas de Mar, one of the most pluralistic municipalities in Spain, where more than 100 different nationalities live together, is the image of the EU motto “United in diversity”. Aware of the importance of guaranteeing a proper management of differences, Roquetas City Council has been working actively in this area, and its work is being recognized at European level. In more than 20 years of work with EU funds and several participation in EU funded projects, the Municipality of Roquetas de Mar managed to capitalize the knowledge acquired in years of activities. The City Administration is programming to invest one million euros of the European Social Fund, to organize 21 training courses for young under 29 years old, in order to enhance their training opportunities and foster the employment.

Furthermore, last December the City participated in a competitive procedure in which several Spanish cities presented their Sustainable and Integrated Urban Development Strategies (EDUSIs) in order to have access to the European Regional Development Fund (5% of the ERDF is allocated to cities). The City of Roquetas de Mar, being one of the few EDUSI Cities in Spain that has an explicit support from Europe decided to apply. The technical secretariat of the URBACT Programme supported Roquetas’ initiative to "identifying the best practices at European level and fund them through the National and Regional Operational Programs". This support of the URBACT programme has been fostered by the participation of the City Council, through its Citizenship Services Area, in the "Arrival Cities" project, of which the production of an Integrated Action Plan is the main output, designed through a participatory methodology that the European Union recommends for any process of urban development. It is very recent the new that this cooperation was very fruitful as the funding of 10 million euros has been allocated to the Minucipality to develop its Sustainable and Integrated Urban Strategies.