Caritas Spain is the official confederation of the social and charitable action organisations of the Catholic Church in Spain. Established in 1947, it has its own legal personality, both ecclesiastic and civil.

It currently operates via 70 diocesan offices and more than 6,000 parish Caritas. Its staff consists of more than 4,300 people, together with 65,000 volunteers at national level.

Via its institutional campaigns, it proposes adopting a simpler and more frugal lifestyle, a fairer and more fraternal way of relating to goods, people and the world. Caritas Spain’s motto in 2013 was “Live simply, so that others may simply live”.

At national level, Caritas Spain focuses its efforts on social justice and integration, housing, health, unemployment, immigrants and research, among many other things. At international level, it primarily concentrates on: emergency relief, development, rehabilitation of disaster victims, eradication of poverty, education and capacity building. It implements its projects and programmes in collaboration with more than 65 countries, in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

Caritas Spain carries out research on a permanent basis into the causes of poverty and social exclusion, the results of which periodically appear in the various collections published by Caritas Española Editores, and in various other periodic publications.

Its experience of working with and for the poor is constant and updated. Caritas Spain knows the problems of the poor, as well as the limitations and flaws of the social legislation that should solve them, and the physical, psychological, family, moral and human consequences of people’s situations. Caritas feels obliged to condemn these situations of social insecurity, relying on due respect for the person and the strength of its own experience, and highlighting what society tends to forget: the world of the poor and marginalised.

In 1999 Caritas Spain was bestowed the honour of the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord.