The municipality of Quart de Poblet, Valencia - Spain, with experience, "Open City Council" has won the 9th IOPD "Best Practices in Citizen Participation" Award. The prize was granted on March 26 in the city of Madrid, Spain, the Secretary General of the IOPD referred to the criteria for choosing the winner: innovation, social inclusion and success in citizen participation. Jurors come from local governments, universities and institutions of civil society.

In this 9th edition of the award “Best Practice in Citizen Participation”, 32 local governments have applied their candidacy. These nominations were from the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, France, Italy, Madagascar, Mexico, Mozambique, Niger, Peru, Portugal, Romania and Uruguay.

The awards and diplomas were presented by Dolores Navarro Ruiz, Delegate of the area of Family, Social Services and Citizenship of the City of Madrid, representing the presidency of IOPD, and Carles Agustí i Hernàndez Commissioner for Citizen Participation and Associations of Barcelona City Council and Secretary-General of the IOPD. The mayor of Quart de Poblet, Carmen Martínez, thanked to the IOPD for this and expressed the commitment of the City Council with the open government project. The councilor responsible for the project "Open City Council" Juan Medina was also present at the award ceremony.

Furthermore there are granted with a Special Mention:

+ Municipality of Méhanna (Niger): “Participatory Budgeting: a real instrument of citizen participation for collaborative governance for sustainable local development”

+ Municipality of Alakamisy Fenoarivo (Madagascar): “Improving public infrastructure in primaries schools”

+ Municipality of Cluj-Napoca (Romania): “Participatory Budgeting in Manastur District”

+ Municipality of Turin (Italy): “The deliberative budget. A pilot project

for the city”