Andalusia’s cinemas could lose €1,416,666.67 after the Spanish government changed its interpretation of the requirements for 2025 grants to support cinema exhibition, regional Culture, Historical Heritage and Sport Minister Patricia del Pozo said in the Andalusian Parliament on September 17, 2026. The grants were funded by Spain’s Ministry of Culture and distributed through the autonomous communities.
Del Pozo said the new requirement was imposed in August and had not been expressly included in the original conditions for transferring the funds to the regions. According to the agreement reached at the Culture Sector Conference in May 2025 and subsequently communicated to the autonomous communities, the Ministry of Culture’s Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) required only that grant calls be issued by December 31, 2025. Decisions on the grants could be made in 2026.
Andalusia, the Valencian Community, Navarre, Castilla-La Mancha, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands issued calls in 2025, with decisions made in 2026. Del Pozo said Andalusia had published its call within the required time and completed the administrative process, with all the funds used for their designated cultural purpose. She objected to the retroactive imposition of a requirement that grants also be awarded before the end of 2025.
The disputed amount in Andalusia concerns 112 cinemas. The region would be the most affected, followed by the Valencian Community, with €1,087,797.62 for 86 cinemas; Castilla-La Mancha, with €392,113.10 for 31; the Canary Islands, with €265,625 for 21; and the Balearic Islands and Navarre, each with €189,732.14 for 15.
In Andalusia, the affected cinemas are distributed across the provinces as follows: 10 in Almería, 17 in Cádiz, 18 in Córdoba, nine in Granada, nine in Huelva, 11 in Jaén, 14 in Málaga and 24 in Seville.
Del Pozo called the repayment demand disproportionate and harmful to the regional cinema exhibition sector. She said the Andalusian government had filed an administrative appeal seeking to overturn it and urged the central government to work with the State Comptroller’s Office on a solution.
She also noted that Andalusia had doubled its grants for feature-film and documentary production and project development, bringing the total to nearly €6 million.