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


IndraMind buys into Spanish sovereign cyber firm
Indra Group has agreed, through its cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary IndraMind, to acquire a 30% stake in a Madrid cybersecurity company founded in 1989, with a contractual path to full control, in a deal announced on 30 September 2026. The target protects information systems and networks for strategic areas of national interest, and it counts among the leading technology firms in its sector with 100% Spanish capital. IndraMind sells an end-to-end dig
Oct 23 min read


Sateliot adds five satellites to its constellation
Sateliot, the Barcelona-headquartered satellite telecommunications operator founded in 2018, is sending five nanosatellites to orbit on SpaceX's Draconis mission, which takes its constellation to 11 satellites. The company builds and operates a low Earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellite constellation that works as wholesale mobile infrastructure, selling access to mobile network operators (MNOs) that need coverage where no terrestrial towers exist. Those operators resell Narrowband
Sep 303 min read


Nomios buys Orbcom for first Portuguese base
Nomios, the pan-European cybersecurity services group formerly known as Infradata, has acquired Porto-based Orbcom, a deal that gives it a first presence in Portugal and adds roughly 15 million euros of annual revenue. The acquisition was announced on 23 September 2026 and completed that month. Financial terms were not disclosed, and Orbcom's management is confirmed to be rolling equity into the enlarged group. Nomios designs, secures and manages digital infrastructure for or
Sep 263 min read


Eupago brings Bizum to Portuguese e-commerce
Eupago, the Porto payment institution founded in 2014 by José Veiga and Telmo Santos, launched Bizum acceptance for Portuguese e-commerce merchants in September 2026, opening their checkouts to a Spanish mobile payment network with more than 30 million users. Eupago sells a Portuguese-regulated payment gateway that lets online merchants accept cross-border payment methods, including mobile payment schemes from adjacent markets, through a single integration. Bizum, backed by a
Sep 242 min read


ZRG Partners buys its way into Spain
ZRG Partners, the global talent advisory firm backed by private equity investor RFE Investment Partners, has entered Spain by acquiring the Madrid executive search business formerly known as Blacksmith, in a deal announced on 11 September 2026. The acquisition is ZRG's first entry into a continental European market through a purchase. Its earlier deals had been concentrated in the United States, the United Kingdom and Chile, and the firm says it will evaluate further European
Sep 242 min read


Portugal's lithium exit clouds European Lithium merger
Salvador de Mello, group chief executive of the José de Mello Group, confirmed on 12 August 2026 that Lifthium Energy, the group's green lithium subsidiary, will not proceed with its planned €492 million lithium refinery in Estarreja, Portugal. The withdrawal removes one of the most prominent downstream processing bets in Iberian critical minerals. "Despite all the effort that was made to secure long-term contracts to allow investment in a factory, this was not possible, ther
Aug 223 min read


Active Space lands €3 million satellite deal
Active Space Technologies, the Coimbra-based engineering company, has secured its largest contract to date, a manufacturing order for structural components across 340 satellites, valued at between €2.5 million and €3 million, with delivery due by June 2028. The customer is a European prime contractor involved in a satellite constellation programme. Its identity has not been disclosed under a confidentiality agreement. Active Space has been embedded in the programme's supply c
Aug 212 min read


Spain-Libya trade surges in H1 2026
Bilateral trade between Spain and Libya expanded sharply in the first half of 2026, according to data published by the Spanish Embassy in Libya. Spanish exports to Libya reached €324.5 million, a rise of 114.6% year on year. Libyan exports to Spain totalled €2,267.09 million between January and June, a gain of 66.8%. The corridor is structurally asymmetric. Libya sends hydrocarbons. Spain sends goods. Full-year 2024 trade data show Libya's exports to Spain were concentrated a
Aug 212 min read


Iberconsa liabilities surge as shrimp season collapses
Iberconsa reported a 5% revenue decline in 2025 alongside a 34.1% surge in liabilities, as Argentina's red shrimp season delivered its shortest and lowest-yielding harvest in a decade. The Vigo-based group operates a fleet of 48 vessels across Argentina, Namibia, and South Africa, holding a combined fishing quota of 106,000 metric tons. That quota ownership, covering frozen hake, Argentine red shrimp, and squid species across the South Atlantic and Southern Africa, is the str
Aug 212 min read


Healthmate automates 100 Spanish clinics
Marcos Valera, Roberto Oliver, and Jorge Calvo co-founded Healthmate in February 2024 at the Scientific Park of Miguel Hernández University in Elche. Eighteen months later, the startup's AI-powered virtual receptionist is running the administrative layer of 100 private clinics across Spain, having processed 800,000 messages from approximately 30,000 patients. The product sits inside WhatsApp and handles the full administrative cycle, appointment booking, confirmations, remind
Aug 22 min read


How Iberian executives evaluate foreign vendors differently than local ones
The pitch was strong. The deck was polished. The references were impeccable, drawn from deployments across Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. The product worked. The foreign vendor had done everything right, and when the Spanish client went quiet after the third meeting, the account executive assumed the deal needed nurturing. He followed up on Tuesday. He followed up again on Thursday. The client thanked him for his diligence, took two more weeks, and then signed with a l
Aug 27 min read


Acciona Energía opens 42-bay EV hub in Badajoz
Acciona Energía has opened a 42-bay public EV charging station at the El Faro shopping centre in Badajoz, Extremadura, in one of the largest public charging deployments by a single operator in Spain to date. The site carries 2,000kW of contracted power, distributed across four 240kW ultra-fast chargers serving eight bays, ten 80kW fast chargers serving 20 bays, and seven 22kW AC chargers covering the remaining 14 bays. Hardware is supplied by Circutor, the Spanish EV charging
Jul 292 min read


Google's Nuvem cable lands at Sines
Google inaugurated its Nuvem transatlantic submarine cable system on 21 July 2026, at a ceremony held at the Lisbon Oceanarium. The cable runs approximately 7,000 kilometres from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, touching Bermuda and the Azores before landing at Sines on Portugal's Alentejo coast. Nuvem is designed with 16 fibre pairs and a planned capacity of 384 terabits per second, supplied by SubCom. The system is owned and operated by Starfish Infrastructure Inc., an indirec
Jul 273 min read


Language politics in B2B: when to use Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, or English
The sales deck was excellent. The product was competitive. The follow-up email, drafted in clean, professional English, arrived within twenty-four hours. The Barcelona distributor read it, forwarded nothing, and never replied. It was not the product that failed. It was the assumption behind the language that carried it. For most Northern European executives entering Iberia, English functions as a neutral professional register. It is the language of business travel, of LinkedI
Jul 267 min read


Portugal moves to privatise Estoril Circuit
The Portuguese government has identified Circuito Estoril, S.A., the state-owned company managing the historic Autódromo Fernanda Pires da Silva, as a candidate for privatisation under a review of the State Business Sector. A government-commissioned report classifies the company as a non-strategic asset, opening the door to a disposal that the state estimates could generate €6.96 million. The recommendation is non-binding. No final decision has been taken, but the process is
Jul 253 min read


Bankinter Portugal writes €800m in mortgages
Glória Ortiz, CEO of Bankinter, disclosed that the bank's Portuguese operation granted €800 million in new mortgage loans between January and June 2026, a figure she shared during a Q&A session with journalists following the bank's half-year results presentation. The disclosure matters for a structural reason. Bankinter entered Portugal in 2016 by acquiring Barclays' retail network and currently holds eighth place in the Portuguese market with a 3.48% share. Those €800 millio
Jul 242 min read


Sumol Compal targets the US market
Diogo Pereira Dias, CEO of Sumol Compal, has confirmed the Carnaxide-based beverages group is planning its first mainstream US market entry, targeting a launch by 2028 through a co-manufacturing and distribution partnership that avoids direct capital investment in production facilities. The move is a direct response to a revenue concentration problem. Sumol Compal's 2024 turnover reached €385 million, of which only €65.8 million came from outside Portugal, leaving roughly 83%
Jul 222 min read


UPI targets Bizum's European bloc
India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal met Spain's Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo Caballero and Industry Minister Jordi Hereu Boher in Madrid between 13 and 18 July, with both sides committing to accelerate technical discussions on linking India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with Bizum, Spain's mobile instant-payment platform. No commercial agreement, pilot programme, or go-live date has been announced. India's Commerce Ministry confirmed the commitment. The
Jul 213 min read


Renfe signs Ukraine rail modernisation deal
Renfe Proyectos Internacionales (RPI), the international consulting subsidiary of Spain's national railway operator Renfe, signed a memorandum of cooperation with Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine's state-owned national rail network, on or around 17 July 2026. The agreement was announced by Ukrzaliznytsia via its official Telegram channel. The memorandum covers automatic gauge-change technology, interconnection between track systems, development of 1,435 mm European standard gauge in U
Jul 193 min read


The role of personal referrals in bypassing Iberian gatekeepers
The German software founder arrived in Madrid with a polished deck, a LinkedIn connection, and a meeting he had booked cold through a mutual-interest group online. The meeting happened. It was warm, curious, and ran twenty minutes over time. His counterpart asked detailed questions. He left certain something was moving. He followed up the next day. Then again three days later. The replies came, friendly but brief, and then stopped. Three months passed. He heard nothing. The d
Jul 197 min read
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