Description
The reuse of open data makes it possible to generate innovative solutions that improve people's lives, boost citizen participation and strengthen public transparency. Proof of this are the competitions promoted this year by the Junta de Castilla y León and the Madrid City Council.
Being the IX edition of the Castilla y León Competition and the first edition of the Madrid Competition, both administrations have presented the prizes to the selected projects, recognising both students and startups as well as professionals and researchers who have been able to transform public data into useful tools and knowledge. In this post, we review the award-winning projects in each competition and the context that drives them.
Castilla y León: ninth edition of consolidated awards in a more open administration
At the awards ceremony of the IX Open Data Contest of the Junta de Castilla y León, the budget reinforcement (+65%) in the General Directorate of Transparency and Good Governance, the expansion of active advertising content and a continuous improvement of the right of access to public information, which has reduced requests and rejection resolutions, were highlighted. The Open Data Portal of Castilla y León has 776 datasets that allow the development of services, applications and studies each year.
The Open Data Awards recognize initiatives in four categories: Ideas, Products and Services, Teaching Resources, Data Journalism.
Ideas
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First prize: CyL Rural Hub. Proposal to develop a comprehensive platform for the rural territory that centralises services, infrastructures, job opportunities and educational offer. Its objective is to provide families and professionals with useful information to plan a life project in the villages of the community.
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Second prize: Cultural App of Castilla y León. An idea aimed at boosting cultural activity through an application that centralises events, activities and locations, also offering an intuitive and close experience based on open data.
Products & Services
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First prize: CyL Bridge. Application designed to support the integration of migrants through personalized routes, an artificial intelligence assistant and a resource center powered by public data.
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Second prize: MuniCyL. A tool that brings together dispersed municipal information and presents it on a single clear, accessible and up-to-date platform.
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Third prize: Interactive map of Natural Spaces. A resource that allows citizens to explore the protected areas of the territory dynamically and in real time.
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Student awards: Info Salamanca. Platform that offers interactive maps, thematic filters and a conversational assistant to bring provincial information closer and facilitate the consultation of citizen data.
Teaching Resource
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First prize: Use of open data from the Junta de Castilla y León in web development. A project that introduces open data into the learning of web development, with practical exercises and an AI search engine to work directly with real data from the portal.
Data Journalism
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First prize: Heart attacks are no longer a matter of age, a report on the increase in heart attacks among young people.
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Second prize: Burgos maintains regional leadership with 79 wind farms: an analysis of the deployment of renewable energies in the region.
Madrid: first edition of awards that promote reuse in the urban environment
On the other hand, the Madrid City Council has held the first edition of the Open Data Reuse Awards 2025. The ceremony highlighted the quality and diversity of the 65 applications submitted, many of them driven by university students and startups.
The awards seek to promote the use of data from the Madrid City Council's Open Data Portal, support the creation of services and studies that contribute to knowledge of the city and reinforce the role of the city council as a benchmark administration in transparency and accountability.
In this case, the awards are structured into four categories: Web Services and Applications, Visualizations, Studies and Ideas, and Portal Improvement.
Web Services & Applications
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First prize: Madriwa. Find your place in Madrid. A tool that facilitates the search for housing through data on neighbourhoods, services and prices, allowing an informed and simplified comparison.
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Second prize: The guardians of the air. Application developed by Tangible Data to check the city's air quality, especially designed to raise awareness among young people and educational centers.
Data viz
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First prize: Ramp. Routes for people with reduced mobility. It presents accessible itineraries based on geospatial and orography data, offering alternative routes adapted to people with reduced mobility.
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Second prize: AccesibiliMad. It shows public services available in each urban environment, with special attention to the specific needs of different groups.
Studies, Research and Ideas
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First prize: Fifteen-minute cities for children. Analysis of the availability of essential services for minors within a maximum radius of 15 minutes, providing an innovative vision of urban planning.
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Second prize: The impact of tourism in urban areas. This study delves into the relationship between tourist housing, the commercial fabric and labour dynamics, using urban and socio-economic data.
Improving Portal Quality
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First prize: Your Open Data. Improving harvesting in data.europa.eu. Proposal that improves the way data is provided, raising the quality of metadata and boosting European interoperability.
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Second prize: Discovery, observability and intelligent governance of open data. Solution that introduces an automated layer of intelligence and control over the municipal catalog.
Both Castilla y León, with a consolidated track record, and the Madrid City Council, which inaugurates its own recognition, contribute decisively to strengthening the Spanish open data ecosystem. Its calls are an example of how collaboration between administrations, citizens, academia and the private sector can transform public data into knowledge, participation and innovation at the service of society as a whole.
