Is Spain's Andalusia region privatising its public health system?

Whether it be cuts to healthcare centre opening times during the summer, or the hundreds of millions in public money flowing out to private medical companies from Andalusia's Junta government, there seems to be mounting evidence that the regional authority is at the very least bolstering its private healthcare offering at the cost of public provision.

Back in 2023 La Junta announced a great paradigm shift in the regional health care system to make public procurement more agile and efficient and, above all, to put an end to waiting lists. To do this, the regional government launched contracts worth more than €500 million to arrange surgical operations, consultations and diagnostic tests with the private sector.

Much of the process was delayed due to appeals, but the direction of travel seemed clear.

Now a punchy article in Spanish daily El País has laid bare the current realities of the public health system in Andalusia, pointing to a slow privatisation of services in the region.

"Andalusian public health care has long since ceased to be just a battering ram of the opposition against the absolute majority of Juanma Moreno's government, to become a tangible problem for all Andalusians," writes Eva Saiz, "who [now] have to wait weeks to be seen by their family doctor or a paediatrician and up to more than a year to be operated on."

Concerned Andalusians have been demonstrating for some time but have on recent demonstrations been joined by health professionals frustrated by the deterioration of their sector and what Saiz calls "the progressive privatisation that has been applied by the Partido Popular since it arrived in the Junta in 2019."

Andalusia was traditionally a Socialist stronghold then fell to the centre-right PP six years ago.

But by the summer of 2025, seven out of every ten health centres in Andalusia were closed in the afternoons. More than 10,000 hospital beds in the region were "inoperative" until September.

And it's just beginning. In early September, the Moreno government will finally launch two big contracts with the private sector. This is the shift that the regional Ministry has been trying to implement since it was announced back in 2023. Put simply, this is the Andalusian government's biggest privatisation project yet.

In 2023 the then Health Minister Catalina García announced it with great fanfare as "a shock plan" to reduce waiting lists in the region which has been leading Spain for several years.

A total of 38 private companies will benefit from the outsourcing contracts, tasked with performing surgical procedures with long waiting lists in the public system. These agreements will have a duration of two years, which can be extended.

However, writing in El Salto, Aurora Báez Boza notes that the millions come on top of "six years of political and economic decisions that have tipped the balance in favour of private healthcare to the detriment of public healthcare".

According to the report on public health published by trade unions and the Mareas Blancas group in June, 2025 budget increases will end up in the pockets of private healthcare .

"48.4 percent of the budget increase in 2025 will go to private companies, mainly for surgical interventions and diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical spending".

"In reality this is an outflow of resources from the public system, not a reinforcement of it," the report concludes.

Around 57,000 Andalusians have signed a petition for their regional public health system to not be privatised, calling for a debate on the changes.

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