The Spanish Ministry of Health has renewed for four years its subscription to the Cochrane Library, whose Spanish-language version is managed by the Iberoamerican Cochrane Center (CCIb). The new agreement, retroactively effective as of January 1, 2026, ensures the continuation of free access from Spain and in Spanish to one of the world’s most widely consulted sources of scientific health evidence.
In addition to translation activities, the agreement includes knowledge transfer and outreach initiatives aimed at expanding the reach and impact of Cochrane evidence among healthcare professionals, healthcare managers, researchers, patients, and the general public. The CCIb is functionally and physically integrated within the Clinical Epidemiology and Public Health Service of Hospital de Sant Pau and is part of the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau (IR Sant Pau).
The ministry’s commitment has a long history. The first Cochrane reviews in Spanish were announced at the Baltimore Colloquium in 1998. In 2002, the Cochrane Library Plus was launched, and in 2003, the ministry signed the first funding agreement. In 2018, the Cochrane Library Plus was integrated into the Cochrane Library, and the current bilingual portal (English and Spanish) was created. Today, it provides access to Spanish translations of nearly 10,000 systematic reviews available in the collection.
“The ministry’s renewal of this commitment is the best possible recognition of more than two decades of work to bring the best available evidence closer to Spanish-speaking healthcare professionals and citizens. The usage data for this resource show that the effort has been worthwhile,” said Xavier Bonfill, director of the Epidemiology Service and founder of the CCIb, who has championed the project since its inception.
Over the last five years (2021–2025), more than 100,000 unique visitors per month have accessed the Spanish-language reviews, representing nearly 7 million unique visits in total and approximately 13% of all global visits to the Cochrane Library. Full-text access data confirm the high level of engagement with the content: during the past 12 months, users in Spain averaged 1.85 full-text accesses per visitor, well above the global portal average of 1.28. Among Spanish-speaking countries, Ecuador (2.14), Chile (1.73), and Mexico (1.41) also exceed the global average, indicating that the Spanish-language portal generates more intensive use than the worldwide average.
