Spain's Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports has launched a national programme, funded by Next Generation EU, to deploy 53 simulators and digital twins across 2,811 public vocational training (FP) centres. Telefónica Educación Digital, the Telefónica España division focused on workplace digital skills, will supply the educational virtual reality content for the tools over the next four years. The simulators let students practise in immersive, safe virtual spaces that reproduce workplace situations, with the aim of improving the preparation of up to 1.2 million students.
What students will do
The tools are intended to cover all 26 professional families. Telefónica's content focuses on transversal skills: workplace safety, risk prevention, health, sustainability, employability, inclusion and language skills. Promotional artwork shows scenes such as fire control, CPR and first aid, waste management, workplace scenarios, English practice and a job-selection interview.
The simulators run on conventional computers and are to be compatible with the VR devices already in the centres. They offer direct interaction with virtual scenarios, log users' actions, give immediate feedback on performance and store usage history. Telefónica Educación Digital's CEO, Rosalía O'Donnell Baeza, says the approach combines guided training, independent practice and objective performance evaluation.
Scale and delivery
- Investment: EUR 37.9 million in Next Generation EU funding, according to Telefónica's announcement.
- Licences: more than 253,000 simulation licences across the programme, including more than 157,000 initial licences in Telefónica's content project, extendable by 12,000.
- Management: the tools connect to a central Ministry platform that administers and distributes licences under a concurrent-use model, so users can share them. Technical support, maintenance and updates are planned until 2030.
- Developers: the simulators were developed with Ludus, a start-up linked to Telefónica's Wayra venture arm, together with Innovae and Invelon, two Spanish companies specialising in VR and digital twins.
- Platform: Aubay Spain says it helped develop the Ministry's digital-twin management platform behind the national simulator ecosystem.
Status
Telefónica announced its role on 22 October 2026. The Ministry presented its simulator and digital-twin initiatives on 21 July 2026, and its TodoFP page invites public centres that teach grade D vocational courses to apply for simulator and digital-twin licences. The rollout across centres is planned rather than reported as complete.
