Pla Pilot de la Renda Bàsica Universal (Catalonia UBI Pilot Plan)
A regional Universal Basic Income pilot designed by the Government of Catalonia (Office of the UBI Pilot Plan, with methodology by Ivàlua) to give €800/month to adults and €300/month to minors, unconditionally, for 24 months to about 5,000 people. The design combined a randomized sample of 2,500 people across Catalonia with near-universal enrollment (excluding the top income decile) of roughly 2,500 residents in two selected small municipalities. Despite being fully designed and approved by an advisory council and international scientific committee by 2023, the Catalan Parliament rejected the pilot's budget allocation in March 2023, and it has never been implemented or paid out to any recipient. As of mid-2026 the project remains stalled, administratively downgraded, and its implementation has reportedly been pushed to a future 2028-2031 legislature.
Never launched, Budget rejected, Randomized controlled trial, Saturation-site municipalities, Regional pilot, Europe's largest planned UBI trial
Headquarters
- Organization Name
- Generalitat de Catalunya – Departament de Drets Socials i Inclusió (Oficina del Pla Pilot de la Renda Bàsica Universal)
- City
- Barcelona
- State / Province
- Catalonia
- Country
- Spain
Contact
Status & Funding
- Organization status
- Active
- Program status
- Inactive
- Number of recipients
- 0
- Funding type
- Government, Research Pilot
Benefits
- Currency Type
- Fiat
- Currency
- EUR
- Total Amount
- 19,200 EUR (≈ $21,863.03)
- Avg. Per Month
- 800 EUR (≈ $910.96)
- Payment frequency
- Monthly
- How long the program lasts
- 24 months
- Distribution Type
- Direct Deposit (planned/designed, never executed since no payments were ever disbursed)
- Benefit details
As designed (not implemented): adults would receive €800/month and minors €300/month, unconditionally, for 24 months. Payments were explicitly designed not to replace or reduce existing social benefits. The design paired a Catalonia-wide randomized sample (2,500 people) with near-universal enrollment of residents (excluding the top income decile) in two selected municipalities of 1,200-1,400 inhabitants each (another 2,500 people), plus five additional municipalities as controls. No payments have ever been disbursed because the enabling budget was voted down in March 2023 and has not been reinstated since.
Eligibility
Overview
- Eligibility details
As designed (never operationalized): half of participants would be randomly selected from the general population registry across Catalonia; the other half would be nearly all registered residents (excluding the top 10% by income) of two selected small municipalities. Because the pilot never launched, no enrollment, screening, or eligibility determination has actually occurred for any participant.
Geography
- Countries covered
- Spain
- Residency of Target Geography
- Yes
Participation
- Research / data sharing
- Required
- Research / participation requirements
As designed, participants would be required to take part in data collection (surveys, administrative data linkage) for an embedded academic evaluation led by Ivàlua (Catalonia's public policy evaluation institute) with oversight from an international scientific committee (including academics such as Evelyn Forget and Guy Standing) and an advisory council. None of this has occurred in practice because the pilot has never been implemented.
Application Process
- How to apply
No public application process exists or was ever opened. The design called for administrative random selection from Catalonia's population registry (for the randomized-sample group) plus near-universal registry-based enrollment in two chosen municipalities (excluding top income decile) — not an opt-in application. Since the pilot never launched, no recruitment or intake ever took place.
- Selection process
Designed methodology (never executed): (1) a randomized controlled experiment selecting ~2,500 individuals from a stratified random sample across Catalonia, compared against a control group; and (2) a 'saturation'/synthetic-control design in two small municipalities (1,200-1,400 residents each) where nearly all registered residents except the top income decile would receive the payment, benchmarked against five similar control municipalities.
