1001 Smart Cities
🇪🇸 Madrid

Decide Madrid

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below · 🔎 Last verified · ◆ 12 sourced claims, none individually verified yet

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page

✎ Updated 23 Aug 2026 3 sources added. What changed →

Launched in 2015 under Mayor Carmena, Decide Madrid lets residents file proposals, debate and steer participatory budgets — €100M from the 2017 edition onwards. Its open-source engine CONSUL was reused by 250+ institutions worldwide, spawning the Consul Democracy Foundation (2019). The Almeida administration pared it back after 2019, discarding approved proposals and halving budgets; it still runs (~€50M in 2024-25), though only two citizen proposals had ever cleared the vote threshold when the platform was last studied, in 2019.

Live 📅 since 2015
Outcome📉 Scaled back
Evidence🔬 Peer-reviewed
what does this mean?The strongest source behind this entry is an independent peer-reviewed or academic study. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →
Run byAyuntamiento de Madrid
Scale🏙️ City-wide

📊 Impact

Only two citizen proposals had ever cleared the vote threshold when the platform was last studied, in 2019. The participatory budget the platform steers reached €100M with the 2017 edition and held it through 2018 and stands at roughly €50M in 2024-25, after the Almeida administration discarded approved proposals and halved resources.

🏛️ GovernanceCitizen participationDigital governmentOpen data

Sources

↗ Ayuntamiento de Madrid — 2024-25 participatory budgeting resultsPublished 22 May 2025Official primary; confirms the platform still live in 2025: 123 projects, roughly €50M, 50,000+ voters. It names no support threshold — the 1% rule belongs to the citizen-proposals tool, not to the participatory budget, and is sourced separately.
↗ Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul DemocracyPublished 24 November 2023Independent (Nov 2023); budget €30M→€100M and 45k→90k participants 2015-18; Almeida discarded 182 approved proposals and halved resources; foundation 2019; platform still operating.
↗ MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical AnalysisPublished 24 February 2020Peer-reviewed; documents low real-world impact — only ~1 of ~28,000 legislative proposals implemented, thresholds rarely met.
↗ Consul Democracy — AboutOpen-source export: reused by 200+ governments/250+ institutions across ~39 countries; foundation established 2019 to govern the software.
↗ OECD OPSI — Decide MadridIndependent public-sector-innovation profile; four functions (proposals, debates, participatory budgeting, consultations).
Show 2 more sourcesShow fewer
↗ Consul Democracy — home pageStates the reuse figure in the form the entry uses: "The CONSUL DEMOCRACY software is and has been used by more than 250 cities and organizations all over the world." The foundation's About page gives roughly 350; both are continuously revised, so neither carries a publication date.
↗ Ayuntamiento de Madrid — Propuestas ciudadanas (transparency portal)Published 2 July 2026The city's own current statement of the rule the entry's threshold sentence turns on: a citizen proposal needs the support of 1% of residents over 16 to go to a vote.

📅 How old is the evidence?

Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2015. 4 of 7 sources carry a publication date, from 24 February 2020 to 2 July 2026.

When the sources were published

  1. MDPI · researchMDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
  2. Democracy Technologies (Innovation in Politics Institute) · pressDemocracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy
  3. Ayuntamiento de Madrid · city governmentAyuntamiento de Madrid — 2024-25 participatory budgeting results
  4. Ayuntamiento de Madrid · city governmentAyuntamiento de Madrid — Propuestas ciudadanas (transparency portal)

Every source, with links ↑

What happened to this record

  1. Sources last read
  2. Entered the record
  3. 3 sources added

Every revision, permanent →

Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 12 claims with their sources · the forensic record

Evidence Passport · public beta 12 addressable claims, 7 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.

Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 12

The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.

Claim 1 clm-b24e57c41c9c4834 quantitative
Launched in 2015 under Mayor Carmena
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The paper dates the launch precisely — "Decide Madrid was launched in September 2015" — and names the politician behind it: "The Mayor Manuela Carmena was the main political leader of this initiative. She played an important role in the promotion of the initiative and the coordination of the areas involved." The OECD profile independently records that "the Madrid City Council launched the Decide Madrid platform in 2015".
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
  2. OECD OPSI — Decide Madrid
Claim 2 clm-4d2a581f256d1031 descriptive
Decide Madrid lets residents file proposals, debate and steer participatory budgets
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The OECD profile describes a platform where citizens "voice their concerns and participate through the development of proposals, votes for new local laws, debates, participatory budgeting and consultations". The paper lists the same tools — debates, proposals, polls, processes and participatory budgeting — and describes the last as one where "citizens can decide directly on how a part of the next year's budget will be spent", adding that the council treats poll and budget results as binding.
Caveat
The council's decision to treat those results as binding "has no legal coverage", the paper notes, so it holds only as long as the administration chooses to honour it.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. OECD OPSI — Decide Madrid
  2. MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
Claim 3 clm-493266fd591ea2cf quantitative
€100M from the 2017 edition onwards
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Democracy Technologies reports that "between 2015 to 2018 the number of participants rose from 45,000 to 90,000 and the budget allocated from €30 million to €100 million", attributing the figures to Consul Democracy. The paper's table of participatory-budget editions gives budgets of €60, €100 and €100 million, equal to 1.2%, 1.8% and 1.8% of the municipal budget, with participants rising from 45,529 to 67,132 to 91,032.
Caveat
The €100 million level had already been reached the year before: the same table in the paper gives €60 million, €100 million and €100 million for the three editions, and the OECD profile records the rise "from €60 million to €100 million" between 2016 and 2017. The two accounts also disagree on the starting figure — €30 million in the Democracy Technologies text against €60 million in the paper and the OECD profile.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy
  2. MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
Claim 4 clm-7037b8dc047a8e7c quantitative
Its open-source engine CONSUL was reused by 250+ institutions worldwide
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The project's home page states it in the entry's own form: "The CONSUL DEMOCRACY software is and has been used by more than 250 cities and organizations all over the world." The About page of the same organisation gives a higher figure, roughly 350 governments and civil-society organisations since 2015.
Caveat
Both figures come from the foundation that maintains the software, and they do not agree with each other; independent counts are lower and older — 135 institutions in 35 countries as of late 2023.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Consul Democracy — About
  2. Consul Democracy — home page
Claim 5 clm-de6c5854c9d33733 quantitative
spawning the Consul Democracy Foundation (2019)
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Consul Democracy states that "The Foundation was founded in 2019 in the Netherlands", with its official seat in Amsterdam and the twin objectives of maintaining the open-source software and supporting its user community. Democracy Technologies describes the same event and its trigger: reacting to Madrid's retreat, "some of the people who had been working on the software created the Consul Democracy Foundation", whose creation in 2019 "means that its legacy will be less dependent on support from the Madrid government in future".
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Consul Democracy — About
  2. Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy
Claim 6 clm-4ab812213bb8c567 quantitative
The Almeida administration pared it back after 2019, discarding approved proposals and halving budgets
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Democracy Technologies reports that after the change of government "The municipality discarded 182 proposals that had been approved in the previous legislature, and halved the budget resources going forward", and that "since the election of José Luis Martinez-Almeida as mayor of Madrid in 2019, the number of participatory processes has fallen significantly, as has the amount of public money available to the project".
Caveat
This is specialist trade reporting rather than a city document or an audit; the figure of 182 discarded proposals is not confirmed by any of the other sources listed here.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy
Claim 7 clm-923f82e47d15704f quantitative
it still runs (~€50M in 2024-25)
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city's own press release on the 2024-25 round shows the platform still in use: 123 winning projects were chosen and "El Ayuntamiento destina un total de 50 millones de euros", 15 million for citywide projects and 35 million spread across the 21 districts, after "más de 50.000" residents took part and the 189 finalists were voted on "entre el 25 de febrero y el 27 de marzo de 2025". Consul Democracy states separately that "The city of Madrid still uses their platform Decide Madrid today".
Caveat
The €50 million is the sum attached to the 2024-25 round, which the release says will be carried into the 2026 and 2027 municipal budgets — not the spending of a single year.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Ayuntamiento de Madrid — 2024-25 participatory budgeting results
  2. Consul Democracy — About
Claim 8 clm-52a56e0097b59557 quantitative
though only two citizen proposals had ever cleared the vote threshold when the platform was last studied, in 2019
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The paper states the rule — proposals need "the support of 1% of the people over 16 registered as residents in Madrid (27,662 inhabitants at 2018)" before they are voted on — and reports the outcome: "The proposals section needs a minimum threshold of participation for the citizens' proposals to reach the voting phase and only two proposals have achieved this number as of November 2019." Its own table counts 6,984, 8,074, 5,500 and 4,860 proposals registered in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, against a row "Reach enough support" of 0, 2, 0 and 0. Interviewees describe proposals that expire just short of the bar, such as "Massive planting of trees in Madrid" with "20,602 supports of 27,662 required".
Caveat
The threshold belongs to the citizen-proposals tool, not to the participatory-budget projects, which are voted on in a round of their own — 189 finalists in the 2024-25 edition. The paper's evidence stops in November 2019, so it cannot speak for the years since.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
Claim 9 clm-dfb602b53eff257d quantitative
Only two citizen proposals had ever cleared the vote threshold when the platform was last studied, in 2019
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The paper states the rule — proposals need "the support of 1% of the people over 16 registered as residents in Madrid (27,662 inhabitants at 2018)" before they are voted on — and reports the outcome: "The proposals section needs a minimum threshold of participation for the citizens' proposals to reach the voting phase and only two proposals have achieved this number as of November 2019." Its own table counts 6,984, 8,074, 5,500 and 4,860 proposals registered in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, against a row "Reach enough support" of 0, 2, 0 and 0. Interviewees describe proposals that expire just short of the bar, such as "Massive planting of trees in Madrid" with "20,602 supports of 27,662 required".
Caveat
The threshold belongs to the citizen-proposals tool, not to the participatory-budget projects, which are voted on in a round of their own — 189 finalists in the 2024-25 edition. The paper's evidence stops in November 2019, so it cannot speak for the years since.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
Claim 10 clm-a29251d891e0120b quantitative
reached €100M with the 2017 edition and held it through 2018
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Democracy Technologies reports that "between 2015 to 2018 the number of participants rose from 45,000 to 90,000 and the budget allocated from €30 million to €100 million", attributing the figures to Consul Democracy. The paper's table of participatory-budget editions gives budgets of €60, €100 and €100 million, equal to 1.2%, 1.8% and 1.8% of the municipal budget, with participants rising from 45,529 to 67,132 to 91,032.
Caveat
The €100 million level had already been reached the year before: the same table in the paper gives €60 million, €100 million and €100 million for the three editions, and the OECD profile records the rise "from €60 million to €100 million" between 2016 and 2017. The two accounts also disagree on the starting figure — €30 million in the Democracy Technologies text against €60 million in the paper and the OECD profile.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy
  2. MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis
Claim 11 clm-9e1d4d5702b78750 quantitative
stands at roughly €50M in 2024-25
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city's own press release on the 2024-25 round shows the platform still in use: 123 winning projects were chosen and "El Ayuntamiento destina un total de 50 millones de euros", 15 million for citywide projects and 35 million spread across the 21 districts, after "más de 50.000" residents took part and the 189 finalists were voted on "entre el 25 de febrero y el 27 de marzo de 2025". Consul Democracy states separately that "The city of Madrid still uses their platform Decide Madrid today".
Caveat
The €50 million is the sum attached to the 2024-25 round, which the release says will be carried into the 2026 and 2027 municipal budgets — not the spending of a single year.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Ayuntamiento de Madrid — 2024-25 participatory budgeting results
Claim 12 clm-21da8267ce3faf3b descriptive
after the Almeida administration discarded approved proposals and halved resources
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Democracy Technologies reports that after the change of government "The municipality discarded 182 proposals that had been approved in the previous legislature, and halved the budget resources going forward", and that "since the election of José Luis Martinez-Almeida as mayor of Madrid in 2019, the number of participatory processes has fallen significantly, as has the amount of public money available to the project".
Caveat
This is specialist trade reporting rather than a city document or an audit; the figure of 182 discarded proposals is not confirmed by any of the other sources listed here.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders

This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.

unreviewed Revision 2026-08-23-full-claim-array effective 2026-07-25 · created 2026-08-23

Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.

sha256:823efb06ea5f95fb2d0fa7f988c41394a900a5d823cd755529a3f5df2a5b3a68
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
12
of 12 claims mapped
7
source dossiers
4
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
Ayuntamiento de Madrid
Actor types
city-government
Funding model
public
Funding description
Not recorded
Cost
Not recorded
Ownership
Not recorded
Decision rights
Not recorded
Exit conditions
Not recorded

7 source dossiers

Ayuntamiento de Madrid — 2024-25 participatory budgeting results diario.madrid.es · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-b9c7e8817d58aa8c
Publisher
Name not classified · diario.madrid.es
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2025-05-22
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Official primary; confirms the platform still live in 2025: 123 projects, roughly €50M, 50,000+ voters. It names no support threshold — the 1% rule belongs to the citizen-proposals tool, not to the participatory budget, and is sourced separately.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Democracy Technologies — Decide Madrid & Consul Democracy democracy-technologies.org · 5 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-20693f21466cd1b2
Publisher
Name not classified · democracy-technologies.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2023-11-24
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Independent (Nov 2023); budget €30M→€100M and 45k→90k participants 2015-18; Almeida discarded 182 approved proposals and halved resources; foundation 2019; platform still operating.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
MDPI Sustainability — Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis mdpi.com · 6 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-60c4fcc80b499998
Publisher
Name not classified · mdpi.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2020-02-24
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Peer-reviewed; documents low real-world impact — only ~1 of ~28,000 legislative proposals implemented, thresholds rarely met.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Consul Democracy — About consuldemocracy.org · 3 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-ab9a56d16412536c
Publisher
Name not classified · consuldemocracy.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Open-source export: reused by 200+ governments/250+ institutions across ~39 countries; foundation established 2019 to govern the software.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
OECD OPSI — Decide Madrid oecd-opsi.org · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-6b9f17ea4169e925
Publisher
Name not classified · oecd-opsi.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Independent public-sector-innovation profile; four functions (proposals, debates, participatory budgeting, consultations).

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Consul Democracy — home page consuldemocracy.org · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4842a50525bcbae1
Publisher
Name not classified · consuldemocracy.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

States the reuse figure in the form the entry uses: "The CONSUL DEMOCRACY software is and has been used by more than 250 cities and organizations all over the world." The foundation's About page gives roughly 350; both are continuously revised, so neither carries a publication date.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Ayuntamiento de Madrid — Propuestas ciudadanas (transparency portal) transparencia.madrid.es · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-e9239eccc42cf678
Publisher
Name not classified · transparencia.madrid.es
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2026-07-02
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-25
Dossier created
2026-08-23
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The city's own current statement of the rule the entry's threshold sentence turns on: a citizen proposal needs the support of 1% of residents over 16 to go to a vote.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Known limits of this passport
  • Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
  • Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
  • A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
  • The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇰🇷 mVoting & Imagine Seoul (formerly Democracy Seoul) — Digital Civic Participation · Seoul Two propose-and-vote civic platforms: Seoul's mVoting launched 2013, Madrid's Decide Madrid in 2015 on the open-source CONSUL engine. 🇪🇸 Decidim Participation Platform · Barcelona Spain's rival open-source participation engines: Madrid's CONSUL (2015) and Barcelona's Decidim (2016), each reused by hundreds of bodies. 🇫🇷 Budget Participatif — Citywide Participatory Budgeting · Paris Both ran citywide participatory budgets: Paris since 2014, Madrid via Decide Madrid from 2015 — though Madrid's was scaled back after 2019.

The participation platform, and what happened after the launch

Four cities put proposals and budgets online, three of them on software another city wrote. The interesting part is not the launch — it is what the same city's own data says a few years later.

ProjectSinceStatusOutcomeEvidenceRun byCostWhere it stands now
Budget Participatif — Citywide Participatory BudgetingParis, 🇫🇷 2014 Live Succeeded Official City government not public A decade in and still running at scale, with thousands of projects delivered — and no edition in an election year.
Decidim Participation PlatformBarcelona, 🇪🇸 2016 Live Succeeded Official City government not public The software outgrew the city that wrote it, running in hundreds of institutions while Barcelona still uses it at home.
Decide MadridMadrid, 🇪🇸 2015 Live Scaled back Peer-reviewed City government not public The engine was reused worldwide; the platform that produced it was pared back by the administration that inherited it.
BA Elige: Buenos Aires's Online Participatory BudgetBuenos Aires, 🇦🇷 2017 Completed Scaled back Peer-reviewed City government not public Three editions on Madrid's software, and the city's own dataset records the traffic falling away between them.

Explore the wider context

🗺️ Your City's Problem Map Is Really a Map of Who Complains🗳️ Citizen participation guide🏙️ Madrid city profile🏛️ Governance projects📖 Civic participation platform📖 Digital identity📖 Government super-app
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Decide Madrid” — Madrid, Spain. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/madrid-decide/ (last verified 2026-07-25). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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