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Doing business in Spain
Insights on the Spanish economy, culture and business etiquete,


BarMar enters FEED for hydrogen corridor
The BarMar hydrogen pipeline joint venture formally launched on 3 July 2025 with the signing of a Shareholders' Agreement and immediately advanced the project into its front-end engineering design phase, moving the 400 km subsea link between Barcelona and Marseille from feasibility into concrete industrial modelling. BarMar is the operating vehicle for what would become the world's first cross-border subsea hydrogen pipeline at this scale. It is promoted by Enagás (Spain), Na
11 minutes ago2 min read


Reinsberg acquires Tedisel Medical in Spain
Reinsberg Group, the European medtech platform owned by Czech investment group BHM Group, has acquired Tedisel Medical, a Badalona-based manufacturer of hospital infrastructure equipment founded in 1995. Financial terms were not disclosed. Tedisel Medical designs and manufactures bedhead units for inpatient and neonatal wards, ceiling-mounted supply pendants for intensive care and critical areas, technical panels, and operating-room software. It competes directly with Dräger,
2 days ago2 min read


Navigating family-owned businesses in Spain and Portugal
The call had gone well. The Northern European firm had flown two partners to Madrid, been received warmly at the family's offices, shared a long lunch, and come away with what felt unmistakably like enthusiasm. The patriarch had leaned forward. He had asked detailed questions. He had introduced his eldest son. Back in Amsterdam, the partners wrote up their notes and sent a follow-up proposal within the week. Then they sent another. Then, after three weeks of silence, they cal
2 days ago7 min read


Trump orders trade cut-off with Spain
US President Donald Trump on 8 July 2026 verbally ordered an immediate halt to all trade with Spain during a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, directing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to act at once. "Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits… Don't even talk to them. They're hopeless, bad people." — Donald Trump, US President. No executive order or formal legal instrument accompanied the statement. The White House had not provided details
Jul 82 min read


Bizay raises €48.7 million Series D
Sérgio Vieira, CEO and co-founder of BIZAY, announced a €48.75 million Series D on 7 July 2026, alongside the company's first profitable year and annual revenue set to surpass €88.6 million. The round was led by Indico Capital Partners, an existing investor since the 2020 Series C, with participation from Lince Capital, Cedrus, and BPF. Prior rounds had brought total pre-Series D funding to approximately €72 million. BIZAY is a mass-customisation platform that lets SMEs order
Jul 72 min read


Santana brings the Cajal to Linares
Edu Blanco, CEO of Santana Motors, will present the Cajal, the brand's first all-terrain vehicle since the Linares factory closed in 2011, at an official event in Linares on 15 July 2026, with commercial sales following in the second half of the year. The Cajal is a body-on-frame, permanent-4WD off-road SUV assembled in Linares from kits supplied by BAIC Group, the Chinese manufacturer whose BJ40 platform underpins the model. The vehicle measures 4.7 metres in length and seat
Jul 53 min read


Holiday calendars that destroy Q3 pipeline if you ignore them
The email went out on a Tuesday in early August. A software sales director from a Nordic firm, three weeks into a new Iberian territory, had a warm lead in Madrid, a head of operations who had taken a call in June and expressed genuine interest. The follow-up was professionally worded, referenced the earlier conversation, and asked for thirty minutes in the first week of August. Then another, shorter note went out the following Thursday. Neither was answered. When September a
Jul 57 min read


Riyadh Air lands in Málaga this summer
Riyadh Air will operate three weekly direct flights between Málaga, Costa del Sol Airport and Riyadh from 14 July 2026, making Spain the only country in its entire launch network to hold two simultaneous destinations, with a Madrid service following three days later on 17 July. The carrier is Saudi Arabia's second flag carrier, wholly owned by the sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF) and launched in March 2023. It operates Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft configured across
Jul 42 min read


Gotion builds cathode plant in Valladolid
Gotion High-Tech and Spain's Ministry of Industry have officially confirmed a €950 million investment to construct two battery facilities on a 12-hectare industrial site in Valladolid. The Chinese battery manufacturer will build a cathode active materials plant and a battery recycling plant, with construction starting in 2027. The Spanish government will contribute €138 million in grants under the PERTE VEC programme, €46 million more than the provisional figure reported in M
Jul 33 min read


IPN takes the controls of MIT Portugal
Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN) has signed a contract with the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) to assume executive direction of the MIT Portugal Programme until 2030, sharing national coordination with the University of Minho. The annual budget for the role stands at approximately €500,000. The appointment marks the first time the programme's administrative centre of gravity has moved to Coimbra. Instituto Superior Técnico held the coordination through Phases I and II
Jul 22 min read


Lufthansa Technik breaks ground in Portugal
Lufthansa Technik broke ground on 29 June 2026 on a 55,000-square-metre MRO facility in Santa Maria da Feira, south of Porto, in a €309 million investment that the Portuguese government has classified as a Projeto de Interesse Nacional, a designation that accelerated land-use approvals and unlocked a €223 million AICEP incentive package signed at the same ceremony. The facility, wholly owned by Lufthansa Technik Portugal, will repair engine parts and aircraft components for a
Jun 303 min read


Why 'closing' is a dirty word in Iberian enterprise sales
The sales director flew in from Amsterdam on a Tuesday. By Thursday he had the product demo done, the pricing deck approved, and the WhatsApp group with the procurement lead active. He flew home on Friday and sent a follow-up email that afternoon. Another on Monday. A call request on Wednesday. By the end of the following week, the Spanish prospect had stopped responding entirely. The deal did not stall. It ended. And the sales director spent the next quarter trying to unders
Jun 288 min read


Air Europa opens Madrid–Johannesburg route
Air Europa launched its first direct service between Johannesburg and Madrid on 24 June 2026, operating three weekly flights using Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft and providing more than 92,000 seats annually on a corridor that previously required a connection through London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or Paris. Spain's third-largest airline, headquartered in Mallorca and operating its long-haul network through Madrid, Barajas, competes on the Johannesburg, European hub corridor wi
Jun 273 min read


InvoiceXpress brings AI to Portuguese invoicing
Rui Alves, CEO of InvoiceXpress, has launched an AI-powered invoicing integration built on Anthropic's Claude platform, allowing Portuguese businesses to issue invoices, record receipts, query overdue documents, analyse billing data, and update client records through natural language commands, with no programming required. The integration uses Model Context Protocol (MCP), an architecture that acts as a secure bridge between AI platforms and external software. Until now, conn
Jun 262 min read


Promptly Health links 70 million clinical lives
Promptly Health, the Porto-founded federated health-data company, has integrated Hapvida NotreDame Intermédica into its network, adding 16 million Brazilian beneficiaries and bringing the total population covered by its platform to more than 70 million people across Europe and Brazil. The deal was confirmed on 25 June 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed. Hapvida joins without upfront capital investment, as Promptly's network model allows data partners to onboard at zero
Jun 253 min read


EIB backs Resonac's A Coruña graphite plant
The European Investment Bank has signed an advisory agreement with Resonac Graphite Spain to support the company's project to produce synthetic graphite for electric vehicle batteries at its site in A Coruña. The engagement was formalised in late June 2026 and marks the most tangible signal yet that the company is positioning for a grant application under the EU Innovation Fund. César Castiñeira Díaz, President and CEO of the Resonac Graphite Business Unit and President of Re
Jun 242 min read


FastFiber and Vauban bid for DSTelecom
FastFiber and Vauban Infrastructure Partners have both entered the binding offer phase to acquire 100% of DSTelecom, Portugal's largest wholesale telecommunications operator, with at least two candidates currently undergoing due diligence. The sale covers the entirety of DSTelecom. Cube Infrastructure Fund II, which acquired 54% of DSTelecom in 2018, is selling its stake after roughly eight years. The Braga-based DST Group, led by the Gonçalves Teixeira family and holding the
Jun 233 min read


Ingedetec opens Tangier engineering office
Juan José Marcos, CEO of Barcelona-based Ingedetec, has opened a technical office in Tangier, Morocco, committing €230,000 to the operation. Of that total, €80,000 came from an ACCIÓ grant disbursed under Catalonia's Multilocation: New Foreign Subsidiaries programme. Ingedetec sells engineering design and development services, electrical architecture, lighting, battery systems, bumpers, and interior and exterior vehicle components, to automotive, railway, and aeronautical man
Jun 232 min read


TikTok Shop goes live in Portugal
TikTok Shop went live in Portugal on 15 June 2026, giving Portuguese users the ability to discover, buy, and pay for products inside the app through short videos, live streams, and creator storefronts, without being redirected to an external retailer. The launch extends ByteDance's European social commerce rollout, which reached Spain and Ireland in 2024 and France, Germany, and Italy in March 2025. Portugal was not part of the initial continental wave but has now joined a fo
Jun 222 min read


Business card rituals and first-meeting etiquette that still matter in 2026
The Swedish founder put his phone on the table within thirty seconds of sitting down. Not to take a call. Not to check the time. He opened the app, tapped twice, and sent a digital contact card to the director across from him before the coffee had been poured. It was efficient, considered, even a little elegant. The director accepted it without comment, set his own phone face-down, and spent the rest of the lunch being entirely pleasant and entirely unreachable. The follow-up
Jun 216 min read
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