Rural Agenda of Catalonia — Agenda rural de Catalunya

Good Practice

Sustainability

Rural Agenda of Catalonia — Agenda rural de Catalunya

A strategy developed with broad participation from local stakeholders and institutions, establishing actions to ensure a vibrant, balanced, and sustainable rural world. It includes specific measures to improve employment opportunities, promote teleworking and coworking, and facilitate work-life balance and time management in rural areas.

Catalan Government

Spain

Regional policy

POLICY OBJECTIVE

The Agenda’s objectives are as follows:

People, well-being, and demographic challenge: Strengthen social cohesion and well-being by improving essential services for people’s full development, equal opportunities, and support. Additionally, address the demographic challenge in terms of social rootedness, aging with dignity, welcoming new populations, and creating new opportunities to live in rural areas.
Ecological transition: Accelerate the energy transition, regenerative management of natural resources and protection of ecosystem services, and implement measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Connected territory: Ensure digitalization, sustainable mobility, and territorial intelligence.
Agrifood system: Reconnect the links of the agrifood system, generational succession in agriculture and fisheries, fair value chains, food sovereignty, and agricultural and forestry production and distribution.
Forest management: Silviculture, forest fire prevention, and opportunities for non-timber forest products.
Innovation and social and economic revitalization: Drive rural innovation, economic revitalization, and cultural vibrancy through rural generational succession, economic activity, heritage valorization, and cultural innovation.
Governance: Build a solid, accessible, and efficient governance framework by reconnecting urban-rural needs and realities; a legal framework and decision-making systems, and also implement actions that guarantee true rural development.

CONTEXT

Catalonia’s rural areas face structural challenges such as depopulation, lack of job opportunities, the digital divide, and difficulties in accessing basic services and mobility. These factors often necessitate long travel distances and hinder the work-life-community balance. With the aim of reversing these trends and placing rurality at the centre of sustainable development strategies, the Interdepartmental Commission on Rural Depopulation, chaired by the Department of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda, commissioned the elaboration of the Rural Agenda of Catalonia. The process was based on a participatory methodology, involving over 1,200 people and entities through thematic and territorial workshops, consultations, and open participation channels.

The result is a strategic roadmap that, in coherence with the Urban Agenda and Agenda 2030, recognises the key role of rural areas in the country’s sustainability and establishes actions to ensure a vibrant, diversified, and populated future for rural territories.

POLICY DESCRIPTION

The Rural Agenda of Catalonia (2022) is the framework document that establishes seven major challenges and over 800 actions to strengthen rural areas. In relation to time policies, the Agenda includes specific measures in areas such as:

Mobility and access to work: Rethink the public transport network, implement on-demand micro-transport, and promote sustainable alternatives like rural car-sharing or green ways.
Employment and teleworking: Promote teleworking as a tool for rootedness, create shared workspaces in micro-villages, foster alliances between rural and urban coworking spaces, and offer incentives to companies to hire people residing in rural areas.
Working conditions and work-life balance: Improve conditions for typically rural and care jobs, reduce wage differences compared to urban areas, and highlight the role of women in rural economic and social activity.

These measures directly link the Rural Agenda with the promotion of a more rational and sustainable use of working time in rural environments, with the aim of reducing territorial and gender inequalities and improving the well-being and quality of life of the population.

KEY ASPECTS

Key aspects include:

Development through an extensive participatory process involving over 1,200 people and entities, ensuring legitimacy and adaptation to the real needs of rural areas.
Innovation in incorporating time policies into rural areas, traditionally absent from the work-life balance and time management agenda.
A comprehensive approach combining mobility, local public services, digitalisation, and new forms of work (teleworking, coworking), facilitating population rootedness.
A transversal gender and care perspective: measures to reduce territorial and gender inequalities in access to work and shared responsibility for care.
Linkage with international agendas (Agenda 2030 and Urban Agenda), ensuring coherence with sustainable development goals.

RESULTS

The Rural Agenda has driven multiple concrete initiatives that contribute to a more rational use of time and improved well-being in rural areas. Some examples:

Implementation of the first cycle of early childhood education in rural schools, to guarantee access to local education and promote family reconciliation.
Shuttle project in Alta Segarra, a flexible on-demand transport service that reduces travel and optimises mobility in low-density areas.
Rural Mobility Working Group, a consensus-building space that has produced a document with 50 proposals to improve mobility in rural environments.
Mobile slaughterhouse, which avoids long-distance animal transport, reduces costs and time for farmers, and promotes local economic rootedness.
Creation of coworking spaces and promotion of teleworking, to encourage new forms of employment and reduce travel.
Rootedness Program, to reverse population loss in small municipalities and foster territorial cohesion. These actions contribute to reducing territorial inequalities and ensuring that people living in rural areas have access to job opportunities, services, and living conditions comparable to urban areas.

There are many examples of proposals that respond to the Rural Agenda and are also related to time policies (reducing travel time between people and basic services, improving mobility, Coworking projects, among others). Not all proposals involve the participation of the Catalan Government; many are the result of private entities that are part of the Rural Agenda’s Driving Commission, local administrations, or networking with different actors.

Policy's Website

Bústia de l'Agenda Rural

agendarural@arca-dr.ca