Fuengirola, awarded nationally in innovation by the Citizen Card
The City Council has received the prestigious ‘ABB Ability Awards’ award in the Public Administration category for the municipal app that centralizes services and promotes citizen participation. Since this tool has been in operation, the City Council has issued nearly 57,000 credentials and has had more than 4.6 million uses.
12/22/2025 – Fuengirola, awarded nationally in innovation for the Citizen Card at the ABB Ability Awards 2025 Digitalization and Sustainability, held in Madrid last Thursday, December 18. This technological tool, with which the City Council offers a mobile application with which to access numerous municipal services and which also promotes citizen participation, has been awarded the award for the best national initiative in the Public Administrations category.
“Fuengirola is once again recognized as a benchmark in terms of innovation and application of new technologies in its relationship with citizens at a national level. It is a source of pride for all Fuengirola residents that the name of our town is synonymous with modernity and avant-garde through absolutely pioneering initiatives. We will continue working to implement more innovative systems that allow us to further improve the quality of life of our neighbors and the services we provide at the City Hall. We are convinced that this is the way,” declared Ana Mula.
The Citizen Card is a mobile application through which any Fuengirola resident can identify themselves and use different public services, such as traveling for free on the city bus, signing up for municipal workshops, collecting registration flyers or paying taxes or bills in the network of Citizen ATMs, reserving the use of sports spaces or participating in surveys and public consultations, among other utilities.
In this regard, Mula has indicated that the use of the Citizen Card is increasingly widespread among Fuengirola residents. In fact, to date the City Council has issued nearly 57,000 credentials – more than 33,000 virtual and nearly 24,000 physical – and they have had more than 4.6 million uses in their almost two years of life, most of them to take the free city bus for registered residents.
Likewise, during all this time, it has also become a mechanism for residents to register for workshops, courses and municipal activities -mainly in the Youth Area-. Specifically, in more than 200 initiatives that have involved more than 6,000 applications. It is also being widely used to reserve the paddle tennis courts at Parque de La Loma. A service that has been available for approximately a year, and that has already registered more than 3,000 requests.
It is the fourth national award in Innovation and Smart City that the City Council has received. In 2021, the Association of Technology Companies @Aslan awarded the City Council its ‘Success Stories of Digital Transformation in Administrations and Public Bodies’ award for the sensorization project on the city’s beaches to control the capacity on its sandy beaches using artificial intelligence, during the COVID-19 crisis. While, in 2023, the city was awarded the award for the best initiative for the video processing project at the XIII National Congress of Innovation and Public Services. And this same year, in April, the Citizen Card itself won the Good Local Practices Award from the Network of Spanish Cities for Climate.