The following is an update shared by ATENIN with Victim Support Europe and its members
After more than a decade as part of the Victim Support Europe network, we are pleased to introduce ATENIN more fully to the network and to share some of the developments that have marked 2026 for our organisation.
ATENIN is an Andalusian worker cooperative of social interest (Sociedad Cooperativa Andaluza de Interés Social) based in Huelva, in southern Spain, specialising in victim support, restorative justice and mediation. On behalf of the Regional Government of Andalusia, we currently manage four public justice services in our province: the Victim Assistance Office (SAVA), penal mediation (SEMPA), information on mediation (PIMA) and civil and commercial mediation (SEMCA). All four services are delivered from within court buildings, so our teams work inside the justice system itself, side by side with the professionals victims encounter there.
Our longest-standing service is SAVA Huelva. ATENIN has managed it since January 2005, when the professional team already delivering the service, originally established as a project of Andalusia’s public universities, formed a social cooperative to continue its work through public tender. The service itself dates back to 2002 and has supported more than 25,000 people since then, including 3,031 in 2025 alone. Working in close cooperation with judges, courts and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the SAVA team accompanies victims throughout their court appearances, from statements and hearings to trials, including pre-recorded evidence taken in Gesell rooms with children and other victims in situations of particular vulnerability.
Over the years, the model has progressively expanded. Since 2019, SAVA Huelva has provided coverage across every judicial district in the province, and in 2026 the team was reinforced with an additional psychologist. More broadly, this has been a year of consolidation for ATENIN: SAVA and SEMPA have been renewed through public procurement and are already under way, a new SEMCA contract has been awarded and will start shortly, and PIMA continues to operate while its new tender is resolved. Throughout, our restorative justice and mediation programmes continue to develop alongside victim support.
This consolidation has coincided with another important development for our profession in Andalusia. Following the creation by law of the Official College of Criminology of Andalusia in 2025, two of ATENIN’s co-directors are serving on its first governing board, one of them as its founding Dean. For an organisation whose work has always brought together law, criminology, psychology and social intervention, the increasing professional recognition of criminology is particularly significant.
Some VSE members may also have seen the recent VSE story When Justice Has Four Paws: Facility Dogs Supporting Victims in Court in Spain, which presents Auva, ATENIN’s facility dog programme for children and victims in situations of particular vulnerability involved in judicial proceedings. Rather than repeating that story here, we would simply like to thank VSE for giving the project its own space and helping us share this experience with colleagues across Europe.
Our involvement with the VSE network goes back many years and has taken different forms, from European projects such as BeneVict to ongoing exchanges with colleagues across the network. Today, one of its most practical expressions is VSE’s cross-border Referral System, in which ATENIN handles referrals for victims across Spain. For a regional organisation such as ours, this cooperation is a daily reminder that many of the challenges faced by victims locally require responses that reach far beyond local or national boundaries.
What began in Huelva more than two decades ago as a university-based victim assistance project has gradually developed into a broader organisation working across victim support, restorative justice and mediation. We are very pleased to be able to share that journey with the VSE network and look forward to contributing much more actively to it in the years ahead.
