Sagunto wins the SG CITY 50-50 badge for its gender equality policies
Sagunto City Council has won the SG CITY 50-50 badge, an international endorsement of its equality policies that also opens the door to a network of municipalities offering training and exchange of good practice.
Sagunto City Council (Ayuntamiento) has just obtained an international certification of its equality policies: the SG CITY 50-50 Badge, announced on 21 September 2026. With it, the municipality joins those that submit themselves to an outside check of how far a gender perspective runs through their work, from the services they provide to the way they are organised internally.
The certification advances in stages. First, the municipality carries out a self-assessment to find its strengths and what it needs to correct. With that picture, it selects the measures it will apply over the following two years and gathers them in a Commitment Plan, together with objectives and indicators for checking progress. This is how ForGender Seal, the body that developed the standard, explains it. The design ties the recognition to a timetable and to verifiable results. What the council's statement does not make clear is which measures Sagunto has chosen for its plan.
Behind the badge is DIGECP, the acronym of the project Distintivo por la Igualdad de Género en Pueblos y Ciudades (Gender Equality Badge for Towns and Cities), a European initiative co-funded by the EU and promoted by the ForGender Seal association. Its aim is for councils to receive support while they steer their policies towards more equal municipalities, with shared responsibilities and respect for women's rights. The concrete tool is the SG CITY 50-50 Standard, an evaluation and certification system with which each council analyses what it does, points out its shortcomings and takes on commitments for the future. Its criteria respect the division of powers between administrations and rest on both national legislation and international treaties on women's rights, sustainability, cities and climate change.
The practical reach is not limited to isolated equality programmes. The idea is that a gender approach shapes how the whole organisation works: municipal planning, services for citizens, channels of participation, procurement, institutional communication and the way daily-life time is organised. That is why the badge looks inward, at the council's structure and operation, as well as outward, at what it offers residents.
It helps to separate what the badge certifies from what it cannot yet certify. It certifies that the council has undergone an analysis and adopted a working method; the effect on residents' lives will depend on the specific measures in that plan and on whether they are carried out over the planned two years. That is precisely what is worth following in the coming months: which actions are chosen and what the indicators show.
The second consequence is one of belonging. Sagunto joins the Network of Municipalities for Gender Equality (Red de Municipalidades por la Igualdad de Género), where local administrations collaborate and pass on what has worked for them. Council staff and elected officials can use it to access specific courses, support documents, content and sessions for exchanging experience. The most visible event is the Forum of Municipalities Committed to Equality, which every year in Barcelona brings together talks, debates and municipal examples on equality and on shared responsibility in the use of time.
For Darío Moreno, mayor and councillor for Equality, the key is that this value guides how the city is planned, how it communicates and how public services are delivered; in his view, a more equal municipality improves the lives of all its inhabitants. Moreno himself sees the network as a chance to learn from other towns and to have the council's policies go through a rigorous external review. Marta Macias, president of ForGender Seal, says the process strengthens the council's credibility with a more informed and demanding public, and describes it as an administration that is innovative in equality.
Sagunto is not a pioneer here. According to ForGender Seal, in May 2026 about sixty councils across Spain already held the badge, and Girona announced its own that same month. It is a dated figure and may have grown since. The Sagunto council stresses that taking part in DIGECP reinforces its profile as an administration committed to continuous improvement and places the municipality in a European and national network of towns that aim to govern with more equality. The project, moreover, keeps adding localities and gives all of them a shared method. According to aytosagunto.es and elperiodic.com, with additional data from ForGender Seal.