Spain has become the world's second-fastest-growing country for exports of digital services, according to a new report from Fundación BBVA and the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas (Ivie). Digital services range from software development to cloud storage, and the findings mark a shift away from the country's reputation for lagging behind in the adoption of advanced technology.
The report was discussed on the COPE radio programme La Linterna, in a segment called Clases de Economía hosted by Ángel Expósito together with Pilar García de la Granja, economics expert and director of Mediodía COPE. Their guest was Ángel García Jiménez, an economist, research technician at Ivie and professor in the Department of Economic Structure at the Universitat de València.
García Jiménez said the growth rate of Spain's digital services exports had been very strong, particularly following the COVID-19 crisis, with double-digit growth rates recorded ever since. He added that part of the rise reflected a convergence effect, since Spain had started from a very low base after having traditionally focused its economic model on the tourism sector.
Trade composition and export balance
On the structure of these international sales, 51% of Spain's digital services exports are concentrated in professional services, a category that includes consultancy, marketing, auditing and engineering. The remainder is made up largely of IT services and financial sector operations, an area in which Spanish banks rank among the strongest in the European Union.
García Jiménez said offsetting the country's historic deficit in the balance of goods through service exports was vital to avoid macroeconomic imbalances. He rejected the idea that Spain's advantage rests only on lower wages, arguing that success depends mainly on building a strong business ecosystem and institutional conditions that allow the country to act as an international hub for advanced services.
Regulatory barriers and business structure
Despite the positive figures, García Jiménez warned that the main obstacle facing services trade was regulatory fragmentation. He cited an International Monetary Fund report calculating that the tariff equivalent of internal European Union barriers stands at 110%, a cost that doubles for trade outside the bloc.
He also pointed to lower investment in intangible assets compared with countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, a gap he linked to the predominance of small companies within Spain's productive fabric, which makes large-scale investment in technological innovation harder to carry out.
Future outlook and workforce challenges
García Jiménez noted that companies including Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon were signing long-term energy purchase agreements with nuclear plants to secure the electricity needed to power data centers and artificial intelligence systems.
Looking ahead, he expected growth to continue in the medium term thanks to artificial intelligence and lower trade costs. He said it would be reasonable, however, for export growth rates to moderate over the long term as the sector's weight converges with standards seen in Europe's main economies.
On the labor market, García Jiménez said Spain's education system produces well-trained professionals, but that the market struggles to absorb them because of a lack of business scale tied to hiring and flexibility practices. He said the issue was not so much one of training as of the business fabric's capacity to absorb that talent.
García de la Granja added comments from Sergio López, chief executive of Iberus, who highlighted the relevance of nearshoring in the Spanish market. Both assessments agreed that Spain has top-level talent but needs greater scale and strategic capacity to lead the creation of globally competitive software.
