Education signs a cost-free agreement for Vocational Training with the WordPress subsidiary

The Official Gazette of Castilla-La Mancha publishes this Wednesday, October 28, 2026, the agreement between the Regional Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports and the company Tecnologías de la Información Automáttica SLU to promote the WordPress.com Education program in the region’s educational centers. The publication is ordered by the Resolution of 09/23/2026, from the General Secretariat, with official reference 2026/7705, and occupies pages 37852 to 37858 of issue number 207 of the bulletin. The agreement was signed in Toledo on September 16, 2026, by the regional minister Amador Pastor Noheda and by Álvaro Gómez Velasco, Global Education Lead at WordPress.com.

An agreement without financial contribution

The published text refutes the interpretation that this is an award charged to public funds. The fourth clause, regarding financing, establishes that the agreement “does not entail financial obligations, nor direct economic consideration between the parties,” and specifies that access to the program is offered at no cost to the Ministry, the participating centers, the teaching staff, and the students. The Ministry also does not assume expenses for web hosting, technical maintenance, support, or the acquisition of paid plans.

The ninth clause establishes the administrative nature of the agreement in accordance with Article 47 of Law 40/2015, of October 1, and expressly excludes it from the scope of Law 9/2017, of November 8, on Public Sector Contracts. The dissemination of the agreement is ordered in compliance with Article 7.1 of Decree 315/2007, of December 27, which regulates the General Registry of Agreements of the regional Administration.

What the platform offers to students and teachers

The purpose of the agreement is to bring a real professional website creation environment into the classroom, with preferential attention to Vocational Training and Art Schools, in fields such as web development, design, marketing, digital communication, e-commerce, and entrepreneurship. The text itself justifies the choice of the tool by noting that WordPress is the software used by 43% of websites.

The commitments of the signing company include:

• Free access for students for at least one year, renewable during the training period.
• Professional hosting and a free .blog domain for every student.
• Use of themes, plugins, WooCommerce, and professional website management tools.
• Prior educational access for teaching staff, with activation links and coupons distributable by module or group.
• Help materials and a contact channel via education@wordpress.com.
• Priority for requests linked to design, marketing, communication, web development, e-commerce, and entrepreneurship, always using institutional email and through the teaching staff.

At the end of the free period, users who do not contract a paid plan may keep their content under a free subdomain of the type example.wordpress.com, without loss of published material and without financial obligation for the Department.

Personal data, monitoring, and validity

The agreement excludes any transfer of student data: each student registers directly on the platform via the link provided by the teaching staff and accepts its terms of use and privacy policy. The regime refers to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Organic Law 3/2018, of December 5. Responsibility for the published content rests exclusively with the owners of each site.

For monitoring, a Monitoring Commission is created with one representative from each party, which must be established within three months and meet once a year. The designees are Álvaro Gómez, Global Education Lead of WordPress.com, and Sebastián Romero, Regional Coordinator of the Professional Family of Informatics and Communications. The validity is four years from the day following the signature, extendable for up to four more years, and the causes for termination include the absence of enrolled students.

Regulatory context

The agreement is based on the regional competence of article 37.1 of the Statute of Autonomy, on Law 7/2010, of July 20, on Education of Castilla-La Mancha, and on the state framework of Organic Law 3/2022, of March 31, and Royal Decree 659/2023, of July 18, which allow the participation of companies in training activities of the Vocational Training System. The signing company, Tecnologías de la Información Automáttica SLU (NIF B16947632, located at calle Príncipe de Vergara 112 in Madrid), is a subsidiary of Automattic Inc. and provides WordPress.com services in Spain.

The relevance of the text lies in its model: the regional educational Administration limits itself to disseminating and guiding the program among centers and teachers, without committing budget or infrastructure, while the counterparty grants free access to a commercial platform during one academic year. Students and centers are thus exposed to a private technological ecosystem—with subsequent dependence on paid plans—but without immediate cost to the public treasury and with explicit guarantees of no transfer of personal data.

Source: Official Gazette of Castilla-La Mancha, no. 207, October 28, 2026, section III, pp. 37852-37858 (official reference: 2026/7705).