Investment in the Spanish economy maintains momentum. For the fifth year in a row, money allocated to modernize factories, technology and infrastructure has increased, extending one of the longest since the financial crisis. According to a report published this Tuesday by the BBVA Foundation and the Ivie, total investment – public and private – grew by 5.1% in 2025 to reach 347 billion euros. However, despite this positive trend, the progress is still not enough to close the gap opened after the outbreak of the Great Recession and as a consequence, Spain continues without recovering.
The country’s inability to return to the starting point of almost two decades ago reflects a profound change in the economy. During the years of the real estate boom, the country invested almost 30% of its national wealth; Today, that investment effort remains at 20.6%. The indicator not only remains almost 10 points below the level prior to the great crisis, but it is also not enough to catch up with France, where the percentage of investment over GDP (that is, investment effort) stands at 22%.
In line with the trend of the last five years, the investment drive has been led by the public sector. The arrival of the has allowed the Administration’s investment to grow by 9.1% in 2025, placing it 56% above the pre-pandemic level. The private sector has also maintained its dynamism: business investment increased by 4.6% and is already easily overcoming the downturn caused by Covid.
Even more significant is the change in the destination of these resources. Spain has begun to move away from its historical dependence on bricks to direct more capital towards technological assets and knowledge. The report highlights that the country, along with the United States, is listed as e, software and research and development in recent decades. Before the 2008 crisis, construction concentrated 68% of investment; Today that weight has been reduced to just over 50%, including residential assets (homes) and non-residential assets (ships, commercial premises, offices and infrastructure such as sports centers).
This shift towards a more digital model has, however, visible consequences in the . Residential construction is advancing, but at a pace that is clearly insufficient to meet demand. In 2025, more than 226,000 new homes will be created, while only about 88,000 homes will be built, according to analyst estimates, an imbalance that helps explain the growing difficulty for many families in accessing a home. As for, the decline is also marked and continues to be conditioned by the excess of infrastructure and buildings built before the bursting of the real estate bubble. Many of these facilities—from warehouses and business complexes to projects that were never fully used—remain part of the stock existing, which reduces the urgency of erecting new constructions today.
The most worrying data that the study reveals is the deterioration of investment in the . Roads, railways and hydraulic works have lost importance in public accounts. If in 2009 they represented 61% of the State’s investment, today they barely reach 38%.
The situation is more delicate in the maintenance of existing infrastructure. According to the researchers, in areas such as water or railways, spending is so limited that it does not even compensate for the natural wear and tear of the facilities. In practical terms, this implies that the country is consuming its public capital faster than it is replenishing it. Since 2014, the value of productive infrastructure has been reduced by 11 billion euros. Airport and hydraulic works are the most extreme case: investment has fallen by 19.1% and 4.8% in the last decade.
These percentages, which may seem small, become relevant in a context in which the country is increasingly exposed to events such as droughts or floods. “Disasters seriously weaken infrastructure provisions wherever they impact,” the document reads, and insists on the need to make additional investment efforts to cover the capital losses caused by this type of natural phenomena.
The impact of the climate crisis and the lack of investment is not distributed equally throughout the Spanish map, but rather is concentrated in specific territories. Furthermore, researchers focus on the gap that opens when autonomous communities do not invest preventively. The case they give as an example is that of the . To cover in advance the eventuality of phenomena such as the one suffered, it was necessary to increase the territory’s annual investment between 3.3% and 23.2% depending on the climate scenario. On the contrary, having to face the expenses in a single year to replace lost assets increases these rates between 119.7% and 848.2%. This extreme disproportion shows that the investment effort must not only increase in volume, but must be distributed in a preventive and territorial manner to prevent a single catastrophe from suddenly erasing the capital accumulated over decades.
