Abstract

Public authorities in Catalonia, especially at the local level, carry out a number of actions to promote sports by allocating subsidies in order to meet the social and financial needs of both individuals and organizations. Since the Public Grants Act entered into force in 2003, town councils have had to adapt this type of partnership to the principles and duties established in it. Grant allocations account for a significant share of municipal budgets and it is certainly a widely-used governmental practice. Hence this research not only examines the degree of compliance with several aspects in the Act that bring transparence and objectivity to the allocation procedure, but it also assesses the most common awarding criteria and the evaluation systems most town councils use. The sample includes 56 sets of granting procedures, all of them made public in 2011 in municipalities in the four provinces in Catalonia. Finally, the study analyses whether these criteria are consistent with sports legislation in Catalonia.