Spain and Europe

Since 2015, house prices have risen 81% in Spain, above the EU average (62%), Germany (53%), France (27%) and Italy (16%). Other countries have gone much further: in Portugal prices have risen 164% and in Hungary they have multiplied by more than three and a half.

Where Spain stands out is in what it costs to rent. 27% of tenants paying market rent spend more than 40% of their income on housing, against 19% on average in Europe. It is the eighth highest share in the EU.

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In 2023, the year of the last general election, Spain's unemployment rate was 12.2%, the highest of the 27 EU countries and double the European average (6.1%). By 2025 it had fallen to 10.5%, while the EU average stayed at 6.0%. The gap has narrowed from 6.1 to 4.5 points, but Spain is still in first place. It is followed by Finland (9.7%), where unemployment has risen, and Greece (8.9%), where it has fallen.

Between 2023 and 2025, Spain's GDP grew 6.4% adjusted for inflation, more than double the EU average (2.8%) and the eighth highest growth of the 27. But its population has also grown more: 2.1%, the sixth largest rise in the EU, against an average of 0.5%. Per person, GDP rose 4.2%, eleventh in the EU, against an average of 2.2%. Roughly a third of total growth is because there are more people.

Public debt fell from 105.2% to 100.7% of GDP between 2023 and 2025, while the EU average rose from 80.5% to 81.7%. Spain is the fifth most indebted country, behind Greece, Italy, France and Belgium. A falling ratio does not mean less money is owed: debt in euros has kept growing, but less than nominal GDP, which rises with growth and with prices.

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Jobs will be one of the issues of the 29 November campaign, and the 2021 labour reform is the most important change to employment contracts in recent years. Its main aim was to reduce temporary employment, one of the features that most set the Spanish labour market apart from the rest of Europe.

In 2021, 25.4% of Spanish employees aged 15 to 64 had a temporary contract, the second highest share in the EU, behind only the Netherlands. In 2025 it was 15.4%. The European average also fell, but much less: from 14.0% to 12.6%. The gap with the EU has narrowed from 11.4 to 2.8 points. Spain is now third, behind the Netherlands (25.5%) and Poland (15.7%), and almost level with France and Portugal (15.2%).

Youth unemployment has also fallen, but it is still far from the average. In 2021, 35.0% of under-25s who wanted to work could not find a job; in 2025, 24.9%. In the EU, 15.2%. Spain has the second highest rate of the 26 countries with data, after Romania (26.1%). Greece, which had a similar rate in 2021 (35.5%), has fallen to 19.1%, and Italy from 29.7% to 20.6%.

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Pensions are one of the questions the parties will have to answer before 29 November. To understand the debate there are three starting figures: how much is spent, what share of earnings the pension replaces and for how many years it is drawn.

Spain spent 13.2% of GDP on pensions in 2024, against an EU average of 12.6%: the seventh highest share of the 27. In 2008 it was 9.2%, below the European average (11.8%). The rise, of 4.0 points, is the second largest in the EU after Finland's (4.2). The European definition includes old-age, survivors', orphans' and disability pensions, including those of civil servants.

One reason for that spending is the amount. The median pension of people aged 65 to 74 equals 81% of the median earnings of people aged 50 to 59, gross. In the EU, 60%. Only Luxembourg has a higher ratio (88%); Italy is just behind Spain (80%). It is a snapshot of two different groups in the same year, not the pension each worker will receive relative to their last wage, but it shows that retirement cuts income less in Spain than in almost all of Europe.

The other reason is duration. At 65, a person living in Spain can expect to live another 21.9 years on average, the same as in France and more than in any other EU country, where the average is 20.2. In 1975 it was 15.2 years: someone retiring at that age today draws their pension, on average, 6.7 years longer than then.

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There are two ways of counting immigration. One counts people born in another country, whether or not they have Spanish nationality; the other, people of foreign nationality, wherever they were born. This article uses the first whenever it can, because it allows countries to be compared and does not change when someone becomes a citizen. Some statistics, such as the Labour Force Survey by region or Eurostat's over-qualification data, only exist by nationality; we say so in each chart.

Eight countries are ahead of Spain in foreign-born population: Luxembourg (51.5%), Malta, Cyprus, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Germany (20.5%) and Belgium. France (14.0%) and Italy (11.8%) are below. Since 2015, the share has risen 6.6 points in Spain, the fifth largest rise in the EU, after Malta, Germany, Luxembourg and Ireland.

In Germany and France, the employment rate of the foreign-born is more than 11 points below that of people born in the country (11.5 and 12.4 points). In Spain the gap is much smaller, but not only because immigrants are doing better: also because the employment rate of people born in Spain (73.3%) is below the European average for the native-born (77.2%). That of the foreign-born has risen 10.9 points since 2015, when it was 58.7%.

Having a job does not mean working in what you studied. Among employed people with higher education, 32.7% of Spaniards work in a job that does not require it: the highest share of the 20 EU countries with data. Among foreign nationals, 46.4%. The gap between the two (13.7 points) is somewhat smaller than the EU average (16.9 points, with 36.9% of foreign nationals and 20.0% of nationals). The highest shares of over-qualified foreign nationals are in Greece (72.9%), Estonia (56.4%) and Italy (54.8%).

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In 2025, the regions spent the equivalent of 16.9% of GDP and municipalities 6.1%. Together they account for half of public spending, a share exceeded in the EU only by Denmark and similar to that of two federal countries, Belgium (50%) and Germany (47%). France (20%) and Italy (29%) are well below. The difference is who spends: in Denmark or Sweden, all of it is local government; in Spain, the regions, which are responsible for health, education and much of social services.

That decentralisation comes with debt. At the end of 2025, the regions owed 20.2% of GDP and municipalities 1.2%. Only Belgium's regional governments owe a similar share (20.4%); the German federal states owe 14.6%, and the Austrian ones 6.2%. Part of that debt is owed within the public sector itself: the regions owe more than half of it to central government, as shown in «Spain over time».

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Health care is run by the regions, but central government sets the common rules: which services the public system covers, the guaranteed maximum waiting times and the funding system for the regions. All three depend on national laws and decrees that the Government and parliament that emerge from the 29 November election will be able to change. In 2024, public spending on health was equivalent to 6.5% of GDP, below the EU average and in the middle of the table: Austria, Czechia, Croatia or France devote between 8.9% and 9.5%. The gap also shows per inhabitant, adding public and private spending: measured in purchasing power standards (a unit that corrects for price differences between countries), Spain spent 3,319 per person, 19% less than the EU average (4,075).

What the public sector does not pay is mostly paid by households. In Spain, government and social security cover 72.2% of health spending, eight points less than in the EU as a whole (80.3%). Voluntary insurance pays 6.3%, and households 21.5%, directly out of their own pockets. That direct payment includes their share of the price of prescription medicines, but also services the public system barely covers, such as the dentist or glasses, and private consultations.

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