Good practice:

Social Thermalism programme in Provincial Government of Teruel

In the province of Teruel there is a long tradition of taking medicinal baths
The baths are located in the center part of the province and south with natural spring of termal water.
The oldest one is from the beginning of the 20th century with Art Deco decoration.

Taking into account the tradition, the health of retired people and the seasonality of this touristic attraction the Provincial Government of Teruel prepared a social thermal program where the beneficiaries are retired people born in Teruel, living in or having a house in the province and their partners. They need to have a medical prescription that recomend them to participate in this programme and proof that they don't have a health problem that limits their participation.

The beneficiaries can obtain:
50% off the cost of staying in the thermal resort
or up to 200 € per person


Goal of this project
Improve the quality of life of retired people from the province
Allow the spas to have less seasonality
Longer contracts for the staff that are living in the area and most of them are women, sector of the population with more difficulties in the labour market
Publicity for the hotels

12.000€ is the budget dedicated by the province for this porpouse

Each year we have a lots of phone calls of retired people who wants to take advantage of this subsidy and spend some nice days in the thermal with friends from other villages. This subsidy have a big interest for the silvers and they want to know when they can apply

New law of subsidies of Spain is really restrictive and a bureaucracy level disscourage some people.

The region of Aragon and Castilla Leon have similar programmes but more extensive as they include the whole territory, in our case is just local as the territory has a long tradition in thermal baths. So this kind of programmes are developped in other places as they give a positive feedback in health, job and policy level