This chapter discusses five cross-cutting areas for policy reforms that can boost Spain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem covering women entrepreneurship, regional supports, globalising startups and scaleups, co-ordinating policy and tailoring supports. They relate to horizontal issues rather than issues confined to the individual entrepreneurial ecosystem elements discussed in the previous chapters.
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostics of Spain
Abstract
There is strong potential in Spain to boost entrepreneurship activity and the entrepreneurial ecosystem by encouraging greater rates of entrepreneurship by women. Across OECD and EU countries as a whole, this group accounts for approximately two-thirds of the “missing entrepreneurs”, i.e. people who would be entrepreneurs if their entrepreneurial activity rate was in line with that of mid-aged males, requiring overcoming barriers that particularly affect these population groups (OECD/European Commission, 2023[1]). Across the OECD area, women face a number of common barriers to entrepreneurship, including negative social attitudes towards women entrepreneurship, risk aversion, poor self-perceived skills and capabilities, and financing offers and entrepreneurship support systems that do not always reflect women’s needs and circumstances.
According to data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s (GEM) Adult Population Survey, women in Spain were, on average, slightly more likely to be involved in starting or managing a new business than men during the period 2019-2023, with an early-stage entrepreneurial activity rate of 5.6% for women compared to 5.2% for men. This bucks the trend for most other European and OECD countries. However, women in Spain are significantly more likely than men to be engaged in necessity-based entrepreneurship, where the project is being pursued due to a lack of alternatives in the labour market, rather entrepreneurship based on a perceived market or growth opportunity. It is the latter kind of entrepreneurship that policy seeks to promote because of its economic benefits. Looking more narrowly at growth-focused, equity-based start-ups, as captured in the Crunchbase dataset, only 17.3% of Spanish founders were women between 2020 and 2023. A major opportunity for Spain is therefore to address this underrepresentation of women in equity-based start-up companies, arriving at least at the levels of performance of countries such as France and the United Kingdom, where women account for more than a quarter of such founders.
One important area of action in this respect would be to address a low representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, as reported by Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem stakeholders. This weighs on business creation rates in innovation-intensive sectors. In particular, women are significantly underrepresented in engineering fields in Spain, although they are more prominently represented in biosciences.
Another issue is risk aversion among potential women entrepreneurs in Spain. GEM data aggregated from 2019 to 2023 show that 60% of Spanish women who see good opportunities for starting a business would not do so for fear it might fail. This compares to 50% across the EU as a whole. Survey data from the Spanish Association of Financial Advisors and Planners paints a similar picture, with respondents believing that women take less risks with their personal finances than men. Another important factor is that women in Spain are significantly less likely than men to report having the skills and capabilities needed to start a business. The fear of failure and lack of confidence in entrepreneurial skills and capabilities in women can be addressed through entrepreneurial education and training initiatives that are either designed for women or deliberately seek to involve women. A culture of entrepreneurship among women can also be built by a range of measures seeking to increase the involvement of women in growth-oriented entrepreneurship as well as by promoting successful women entrepreneurs as role models.
A range of policy initiatives have been introduced in Spain to promote women entrepreneurship in recent years, while Spain’s Strategic Plan for Effective Equality between Women and Men 2022-2025 includes an objective to foster female entrepreneurship, business creation and self-employment. At national level, ENISA, with the financial support of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, has recently launched a participatory loan initiative, which will allocate up to EUR 59 million in funding to women-led digital ventures. The Ministry of Equality has a funding line that provides microcredit of up to EUR 25 000 to women. The Women’s Institute – an independent organisation attached to the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality – is another important actor in this space, providing a range of relevant programmes including the Business Support Programme for Women, the Rural Women Challenge, and Innovatia 8.3. In addition, the School of Industrial Organisation (EOI) operates the Break programme, which aims to attract women from other countries to develop start-ups in Spain, with funding from the EU-Next Generation as part of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan. At regional level, there are several important activities, with examples being the “Womenemprende” scheme in Galicia and “Andaluciaemprende” in Andalucía.
It is also positive that for some of Spain’s major entrepreneurship support programmes have dedicated carve outs or streams for women entrepreneurs. For example, some editions of ICEX Spain Trade and Investment’s Desafia programme have been exclusively for women entrepreneurs. Desafia provides two-week immersive soft-landing programmes for Spanish start-ups in foreign markets. Prior to the organisation of the women-only programmes, only 13% of participants in Desafia initiatives overall were women. This share has since risen to 31%, with stakeholders reporting that the organisation of targeted programmes for women helped to raise the profile of the scheme among women and increased their willingness to get involved. Another example is the allocation of 25% of the available budget of the CDTI’s flagship Neotec programme for funding technology-based start-ups that are owned or managed by women. More generally, however, it appears that while diversity quotas are a feature of some entrepreneurship support programmes, women remain underrepresented as a whole.
In the non-profit sector, the Spanish Women Angels Association is a network of female angel investors that invests in women-led companies. The network was formed in order to address the gender gap in access to entrepreneurial finance, particularly in STEM fields. Beginning with 34 members, the network has subsequently grown to include approximately 200 members – around three quarters of whom had never invested as business angels before. Entry barriers have been set deliberately low to enable more women to participate – the requirement is for each angel to invest at least EUR 1 000 per year in a company. As of 2025, EUR 3.2 million of investment has been made across 36 women-led companies.
It has been noted by stakeholders that women angel investors are more likely to invest in groups. This would mean that the exclusion of investor groups from certain benefits under the Startup Law could have a disproportionate impact on women entrepreneurs’ access to funding, given the higher propensity for women investors to invest in women-led start-ups.
To further bolster women entrepreneurship in Spain, it is recommended that the Spanish authorities:
Develop a dedicated strategy for women entrepreneurship promotion, articulating the key actions to be taken and their objectives, responsible entities, timelines, and key performance indicators.
Increase public support for women entrepreneurs’ access to key resources such as funding, training, networks and testing facilities.
Raise awareness of entrepreneurship as a viable career option for women.
Review regulations on the ability of groups of investors to benefit from Startup Law incentives, given the relatively strong propensity for women angels to invest in groups.
The regional business environment has a strong effect on local entrepreneurial activity (OECD, 2025[2]), particularly in countries like Spain which are highly decentralised from a policy and regulatory perspective. The governments of Spain’s 19 regions have a high degree of autonomy in the setting of tax and regulatory regimes, the design of startup support programmes, and many other aspects of policy important to entrepreneurial ecosystems, such as higher education policies surrounding spin-off creation. In addition, there are strong differences in the scale of entrepreneurship, and the scale of entrepreneurship ecosystem supports across the country, with much stronger activities in the two hubs of Barcelona and Madrid than in more peripheral regions (Figure 13.1). Indeed, these two cities account for the majority (51%) of Spanish startup companies registered in the Crunchbase dataset.
Note: Data includes companies aged 10 years old or less
Source: Crunchbase, 2024
In some respects, this diversity can be a positive thing, enabling a tailoring of support and resources based on local needs and strengths. The divergence of different policies and regulations can also bring to the surface innovative approaches that other regions can learn from. For example, some stakeholders identified Catalunya’s policy for facilitating the transfer of knowledge and intellectual property from universities as a learning model for other regions. The presence of two, internationally recognised entrepreneurship hubs in Madrid and Barcelona should also be celebrated. With that being said, decentralisation does also bring some challenges affecting startup and scaleup development:
Weak linkages between regional entrepreneurial ecosystems. Links between Spain’s regional ecosystems need strengthening. The siloing of actors and resources between different regional ecosystems results in missed opportunities to share knowledge, contacts, resources and opportunities. It also means that chances to initiate potentially fruitful collaborations are foregone, for example for an entrepreneur in a specialised sector to benefit from advice and mentoring from an incubator in another region. Priorities for Spain are to boost linkages between the two major hubs of Madrid and Barcelona and to establish better connections between more peripheral ecosystems and the country’s two major entrepreneurship hubs, which can help to plug resource gaps at the regional level. It should be noted that there are good initiatives underway – including by private actors such as South Summit and Endeavour – to reduce this fragmentation in the national entrepreneurial ecosystem, with high profile ecosystem events held each year to convene stakeholders from across the country.
Accessing public support. Spanish startups and scaleups can benefit from a broad mix of public support programmes, some delivered by national government and others by regional governments. For example, many regions have their own incubator programmes or grant programmes for their companies. This can make it difficult for companies to navigate what can be a complex public support landscape. The creation of the National Entrepreneurship Office (ONE), as part of the Startup Law, is a very important development in this regard. ONE is a digital platform to co-ordinate support services for entrepreneurship, serving as a hub for calls and events and removing the need for companies to consult many different national and regional websites. Spanish stakeholders often report that better co-ordination is needed between the national and regional levels of government in Spain, with willingness to co-operate with national entities varying from region to region. The strong influence of regional governments means that good co-ordination is essential to ensuring a coherent policy approach and to unlocking potential synergies in the delivery of public supports. There are good opportunities for co-operation here given the relative consensus between different political parties on the need to promote innovative start-ups and scale-ups. An important step that the authorities have taken is to establish the National Startup Forum, which will periodically convene representatives from national ministries and agencies, the autonomous regions and cities, as well as other organisations and ecosystem actors. The forum has working groups in which all the entities can participate, including a group on public policy for the ecosystem. There are further opportunities for better co-ordination to be achieved between national and regional support initiatives. Where national programmes are oversubscribed, regional entities with available resources could step in to support startups that narrowly missed the grade for the national programme. For example, only around 25% of applicants receive grants through CDTI’s Neotec programme. In some cases, Neotec passes rejected applications to the relevant regions for potential support. This removes the need for the region to verify and assess the project applications, facilitating the channelling of support to local companies without the need for an extensive further evaluation. This reduces the administrative burden both for local governments and for start-ups. However, only some regions co-operate with the Neotec programme in this way. A future aspiration is to make available CDTI services to those awarded grants through the regions via CDTI, although this too would require effective co-operation between CDTI and its regional partners.
Regulatory harmonisation and scaling up. The extent of decentralisation means regulations vary significantly in different parts of Spain, making it more difficult for innovative start-ups to scale domestically than it is in other countries. For example, differences in investor incentives between regions may discourage capital investments across regions, while differences in regulations like construction permits, environmental regulations, licences to open businesses, digital labels, food standards or energy efficiency certifications could affect the ease of firms to scaleup their businesses by expanding directly in other regions. Efforts are underway to alleviate this issue. The 2022 “Create and Grow” Law established the Sectoral Conference for Regulatory Improvement and the Business Climate. This serves as a forum for the Ministry of Economy and the economic departments of the autonomous communities and cities to identify barriers in sectors where there is potential for regulatory harmonisation or unification. The conference then works to remove unnecessary red tape and simplify business regulations in the selected areas, prioritising regional co-ordination. Related to this, “Régimen 20” is a new proposal from to create a common set of minimum rules that companies can adopt with a single set of permits instead of adapting to different regional and local rules that apply currently. Implementing “Régimen 20” will significantly enhance entrepreneurs’ access to the full Spanish domestic market, wherever in the country they might be based. Moreover, a working group within the National Startup Forum (the Territory and Innovative Entrepreneurship Ecosystems group) has been created to work on improving territorial distribution of technological hubs across the Autonomous Communities, as well as on promoting initiatives that foster synergies between regions. It also expected to work on strengthening local networks of mentors and investors to improve availability of quality mentoring beyond the main urban centres.
In order to further improve the co-ordination of regional entrepreneurship supports and regulations, the Spanish authorities should:
Continue the implementation of Régimen 20.
Encourage further cross-regional collaborations in the design of public support programmes for startups and scaleups.
Foster more opportunities for startups and scaleups in peripheral regions to network and collaborate with ecosystem actors in Spain’s major entrepreneurship hubs.
Strengthen referral mechanisms between national and regional programmes to guide firms towards the most appropriate supports.
Internationalisation is an important channel for scaling up (OECD, 2025[3]). It offers the opportunity for startups to grow into a much larger market, as well to access a more diverse revenue base, new technologies, and new partners, all leading to more rapid growth (Burgel et al., 2005[4]). Spanish startups and scaleups benefit from good overall access to international markets. This is reflected in relatively good levels of startup internationalisation. For example, international sales accounted for more than 25% of total revenues for 18% of Spain’s nascent entrepreneurs (owner-managers of new businesses aged up to three and a half years) in 2024, which is above the average for OECD countries (Figure 13.2). However, Spain lags behind some other large European countries – including Germany and Italy – in the export-orientation of early-stage entrepreneurship, indicating that there is still scope to increase Spain’s startup internationalisation.
Note: Early-stage entrepreneurial activity refers to owner-managers of new businesses aged up to three and a half years
A number of supports are available for startup internationalisation in Spain. The major support actor is ICEX Spain Trade and Investment. Startups can benefit from the broader ICEX consultancy support and financial assistance of up to EUR 24 000 to help SMEs develop and implement their export plans. ICEX also offers some dedicated programmes for startups, reaching approximately 500 startups per year. Its main startup scheme is Desafia, which is run jointly by ICEX and Red.es, and provides two-week immersive soft-landing programmes for startups in international innovation hubs. In 2024, the scheme organised 14 delegations of 8 startups each to visit a total of 12 international ecosystems. Each programme has specific objectives depending on the characteristics and opportunities associated with the international ecosystem. For example, the programme in Singapore aimed to help Spanish startups to establish a foothold in the wider region, the programme in Switzerland emphasised open innovation opportunities, while in San Francisco, the focus was on teaching the startups how to communicate with US investors. In recent iterations, Desafia has also brought Spanish venture capital investors alongside the cohort of startups, with the aim of facilitating richer dialogue with investors from the international market.
ICEX also supports Spanish startups to attend high-profile international events on entrepreneurship such as Websummit in Lisbon and Slush in Helsinki. At these events, the selected startups will generally have a booth or pavilion where they can present themselves to and meet potential partners. Another key resource that ICEX can offer to startups and scaleups is its network of 104 international offices. These offices provide consultancy advice, services and international matchmaking for companies on an ad-hoc basis as they request it, which can be instrumental in helping Spanish companies to find partners in target markets. However, there is not a formal programme through which this assistance is delivered and there is some scope to use this critical resource more intensively for startups.
There are also important private initiatives. The BankInter Innovation Foundation’s Scaleup Spain Network targets entrepreneurs with the ambition to penetrate international markets, selecting 15 startup CEOs each year and providing a range of training and networking supports through 6-month programmes. Meanwhile, Endeavour Spain (also one of the operators of the Scaleup Spain Network, along with Wayra) helps its clients to internationalise by facilitating cross-border connections, leveraging Endeavour’s presence in more than 40 markets.
Going global is a key milestone for the most impactful startups and scaleups. Public support for startup internationalisation is relatively well-defined in Spain, with ICEX being the public agency with lead responsibility in this area. The Desafia programme is providing excellent soft-landing opportunities for young companies to discover and set up a base in overseas markets. However, there is scope to further leverage ICEX’s rich network of international offices and consultants for startup support.
To boost the internationalisation of startups and scaleups, it is recommended that the government:
Launch a matchmaking programme to connect Spanish startups and scaleups with potential customers in overseas markets, leveraging ICEX Spain Trade and Investment’s network of international offices.
Strengthen promotion of the Spain Up Nation brand internationally and promote the companies certified under the Startup Law internationally.
Startup and scaleup policy is a broad and diverse policy area, with many different public entities involved in the delivery of supports and programmes to enhance development of these firms. In the context of the OECD, strategies and action plans are an important tool for co-ordination of SME and Entrepreneurship policies either at national level (OECD, 2025[3]) or regional level (OECD, 2025[2]).
The 2021 entrepreneurship strategy “España Nación Emprendedora” (Government of Spain and the Council of Ministers, 2021[6]) is ambitious and far-reaching, setting goals that require actions across the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (which houses CDTI), the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Civil Service, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Co-operation, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Affairs and Migration, Axis, and ICEX Spain Trade and Investment. Regional and local government authorities also operate entrepreneurship support policies. This policy landscape implies a need for effective co-ordination.
A key initiative to strengthen policy co-ordination is the creation of the National Startup Forum, as one of the measures of the Startup Law. The Forum involves representatives from national ministries involved in startup and scaleup promotion as well as regional government actors and other ecosystem stakeholders. It meets periodically to analyse, discuss and recommend policies to promote entrepreneurship, co-ordinate policies and programmes across different parts of government, identify good national and international policy practices, and collect, analyse and disseminate data on startup performance. Current priorities for the National Startup Forum are support for scaleups, access to finance, internationalisation, and innovation. Specialised working groups can also be formed within the Forum to address specific topics and bring in external experts who are not normally represented. As well as boosting co-ordination between public entities, the Forum helps to engage non-governmental actors from the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the policy development process, which is key to ensuring that policy interventions align with the needs and opportunities of the ecosystem.
A further important activity the Forum could oversee is the monitoring and evaluation of the Startup Law. This is critical for ensuring the effective implementation of the Law and its co-ordination across government entities. To achieve this role, the Forum can be supported by a monitoring and evaluation secretariat based in a ministry championing the Startup Law, for example the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Civil Service. The Forum and the central monitoring and evaluation unit could encourage evaluation by different ministries and agencies, undertake some evaluations itself, agree an evaluation plan with different ministries and agencies, prepare regular monitoring reports on Startup Law implementation progress, assemble monitoring and evaluation results, report to ministers, stakeholders and government bodies on implementation progress and impact and organise discussions across government on monitoring and evaluation results and next steps for implementation. The central monitoring and evaluation unit could report to the Forum.
The Startup Law has also established the National Entrepreneurship Office (ONE), which publishes information on public supports for entrepreneurship via a single platform. This increases the navigability of the support landscape for startups and scaleups, removing the need for an entrepreneur to visit many different national and regional entities to learn about available supports and services.
National strategies can be an effective means of co-ordinating entrepreneurship support policies across government ministries and agencies. While the Spanish Startup Law sets out numerous important policy actions to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem, it could be beneficial to situate these measures within an updated entrepreneurship strategy for Spain that sets out the context, objectives and targets of policy and identifies all the relevant policy initiatives and responsible bodies for entrepreneurship development. An updated strategy could also be a platform for raising awareness of the Spanish Startup Law, which currently suffers from the lack of a clear reference document that describes its objectives and the details of the different measures.
To further enhance the co-ordination of entrepreneurship policy in Spain, the authorities could:
Ensure the National Startup Forum convenes regularly and has buy-in and engagement from key national and regional entities.
Undertake monitoring and evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Startup Law via a champion government ministry and report and discuss results through the National Startup Forum.
Review and update the 2021 national strategy “Spain: An Entrepreneurial Nation”, taking stock of the milestones achieved. Re-assess priorities in light of recent policy developments and reinforce those areas that require additional efforts.
The policy needs of startups and scaleups vary substantially depending on their characteristics and circumstances. For example, supporting very early-stage entrepreneurs with as yet unproven products or business models requires a distinct set of public interventions compared to those needed for more advanced, scaling companies. Policy needs also depend on companies’ geographical location, their sectors of operation, the type of products or services they provide, the markets they target, and their development priorities overall. Granularity is therefore required in the design and implementation of entrepreneurship policy.
Policy granularity can be delivered by operating a broad set of different programmes and/or by integrating specialised streams within programmes. An example of the latter is the School of Industrial Organisation’s (EOI) Startup Acceleration Programme, which has a Regional and Sector-specific stream. Meanwhile, the Impulsa Startup programme run by the Chamber of Commerce of Spain applies a phased, two-step structure, with the first phase (“Crea & Crece”) helping entrepreneurs to learn about startup methodologies and developing a minimum viable product and the second (“Despega”) focusing on growth and scaling. Another good example of policy granularity in the Spanish context can be found in the design of the criteria for becoming certified under the Startup Law. In most cases, start-ups cannot be more than 5 years old if they are to be certified. However, the Startup Law allows companies up to 7 years old to be certified if they operate in strategic sectors such as biotechnology or if they have developed proprietary technology that has been designed in Spain. This reflects the long timelines associated with developing and commercialising technologies in certain sectors and ensures that startups in these sectors receive the benefits of the Startup Law for a more extended period.
Many of Spain’s public financing instruments deploy a granular approach, too. ENISA has separate financing lines for different types of beneficiaries, with dedicated lines for young entrepreneurs, early-stage SMEs, and scaling companies. Importantly, these financing lines do not just provide a carve out for certain beneficiary types; they also adapt the nature of the support product to the needs of the relevant group. For example, the maximum loan duration (9 years) and amount (EUR 1.5 million) for the “Growth” financing line is significantly higher than for the “Entrepreneurs” line, reflecting the large capital costs and sometimes uncertain development timelines associated with business expansion projects. Fostering innovative, technology-based companies is a priority for Spain’s policy interventions to bolster access to finance. For example, CDTI’s Innvierte programme invests capital into investment funds specialising in technology-based companies, while Fondo Next Tech, managed by SETT (a public entity under the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Civil Service), has a EUR 4 billion endowment to boost access to capital for high-impact, innovative entrepreneurial projects in the digital space. CDTI’s major Neotec grant programme also funds technology-based enterprises.
It is important for policy to reflect the tailored support needs of companies active in specific sectors or industries (OECD, 2022[7]). Dedicated programmes for specific sectors help to ensure that the financial and non-financial supports are relevant and appropriate for the programme beneficiaries. This approach also enables governments to focus public resources on strategic priority sectors. In Spain, sector-targeted policy support is evident through the Ministry of Industry and Tourism’s longstanding cluster policy, which funds innovative business clusters across the country. These clusters provide specialised support to facilitate collaboration and networking within specific sectors. The environment and energy sector has the highest number of funded clusters, followed by ICT and agri-food. Another example is ICEX Spain Trade and Investment’s Desafia programme, which organises for cohorts of Spanish start-ups from a certain sector to visit a particular overseas market. For instance, there is a programme specifically for Spanish biotech companies to visit Boston’s life sciences ecosystem, enabling curated networking, advice and matchmaking in a selected geography with strong opportunities for Spanish firms in the biotech sector. There are also specific supports for social enterprises including specific recognition in Spain’s Startup Law.
Social entrepreneurship focuses on firms that aim to integrate social benefits in their business model. In Spain, the idea of social entrepreneurship was traditionally linked to co-operatives, where the country has a strong historical background. For instance, the Mondragón co-operative movement in the Basque Country has been widely studied as a leading example of an industrial-sized conglomerate owned by its workers that has combined human values, social impact, and competitiveness. Social enterprise laws and regulations are thus derived from co-operatives legislation in Spain.
Since 2012, however, there has been a rapid development of new models of social entrepreneurship in tandem with impact investing. In this context, some incubators have specialised on this type of entrepreneurship. Ship2B in Barcelona and Fundación Unlimited in Madrid are two of the main incubators specialised in social impact in Spain. At the same time, many universities have introduced social entrepreneurship courses and the success of startups such as Paco Polo’s Actuable civic tech startup have all contributed to a growing social entrepreneurship movement.
Spain’s Startup Law, introduced in 2022, has taken a further step in promoting social entrepreneurship, introducing the business type “empresas con proposito”, defined as startups with a social focus which are neither considered as not-for-profit organisations, nor as traditional companies with social responsibility. Social startups need to manage a trade-off between profit and social purpose, and for example may choose to generate social impact rather than maximise revenues. It is thus common that return on investments is lower in these types of companies than other types of startups.
Policy supports have been developed in Spain to help social entrepreneurs overcome specific challenges they face. Typically, social entrepreneurs struggle to access finance more than other startups. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of measuring social impact, which slows impact investors. A related challenge is the lack of a clear certification system for social entrepreneurs which limits the possibility to signal to impact investors which companies are truly purpose-driven. Other countries are more advanced in this aspect than Spain. For instance, Korea has introduced a social entrepreneur’s certificate since 2007, which recognised social enterprises on multiple criteria such as shares of employees who are disadvantaged (e.g. disabled, seniors, etc). The United Kingdom has introduced Community Interest Companies (CICs), which are limited companies which operate to provide a benefit to the community they serve, and in the United States B-Corps are certified for their social impact by B Lab, a global non-profit organisation.
A B-Corp movement also exists in Europe, including Spain. Yet, the legal status of these companies is not yet clear, and there currently no tax benefits for these types of companies in Spain. The most closely related tax incentives are those applied to co-operatives. Since 1990, co-operatives are allowed to apply faster depreciation rates on fixed assets acquired within three years from the date of their registration, and a reduced tax rate on their tax rate, which has been brought down to 20% from January 2025. In addition, some co-operatives defined by the Law, can also obtain a 50 per cent rebate on their total tax liability. However, not all B-corp firms are co-operatives, which creates grey areas in which some social entrepreneurship is not equally supported.
Business exits also represent a challenge for social entrepreneurs as these purpose-driven founders want to make sure that the firm they have created continues to be focused on achieving social impact even after the firm is acquired or has been listed on the stock exchange. As a result, debt tends to be privileged as a financial instrument relative to equity, to limit the possibility that venture capital funds acquire a significant share of the company ownership.
Spain’s entrepreneurship policy therefore incorporates a substantial offering of tailored and dedicated policies aimed at different types of enterprises and entrepreneur. However, Spain’s entrepreneurship policy appears more geared towards supporting startups than scaleups, for example with flagship initiatives such as the Startup Law and CDTI’s Neotec programme focusing on relatively early-stage enterprises. It is important not to neglect the needs of scaleup companies, which face challenges in numerous areas such as accessing later-stage financing, demonstrating and deploying technologies at commercial scale, expanding overseas, and finding first customers.
It is recommended that the Spanish authorities pursue the following actions to increase the match between the policy support mix and the needs of different types of startups and scaleups:
Create dedicated teams within key entrepreneurship support entities such as CDTI and ICEX with a mandate to deliver tailored advice and guidance to startups and scaleups in specific sectors or technology areas.
Launch a public tender for the development and delivery of a specialised incubation or acceleration programme in a select sector of strategic importance to Spain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Establish a legal status or certification for Spanish scaleups, with corresponding benefits and incentives to support their development.
References
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[5] Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2025), GEM 2024/2025 Global Report Entrepreneurship Reality Check.
[6] Government of Spain and the Council of Ministers (2021), España Nación Emprendedora.
[2] OECD (2025), Boosting Business in Regions: Easing Administrative Burdens and Financing Constraints, OECD Regional Development Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/396cc7c2-en.
[3] OECD (2025), Unleashing SME Potential to Scale Up, https://doi.org/10.1787/ea948a58-en.
[7] OECD (2022), Promoting Start-Ups and Scale-Ups in Denmark’s Sector Strongholds and Emerging Industries, OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/8f9bd7b0-en.
[1] OECD/European Commission (2023), The Missing Entrepreneurs 2023: Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/230efc78-en.