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Spain has experienced a sustained increase in business entrepreneurship in recent years, reaching its highest level since 2012. However, business creation remains below the European average and significant structural challenges persist: a high early failure rate among new businesses, a strong geographical concentration of entrepreneurship and a limited focus on high value-added sectors. Despite these weaknesses, encouraging signs are emerging in sectors linked to digitalisation and the Economy 4.0. The major challenge lies in harnessing this dynamism to ensure that more projects survive, consolidate, and are directed towards higher-productivity sectors, so that all this can translate into more solid, balanced, and lasting economic growth.

Agrifood exports have continued to perform very well during the pandemic within a context where international trade has been particularly hard hit by the crisis. Swine meat, fruit and some fresh vegetables have been in greatest demand, while the Basque Country and especially Aragon have been the regions posting the largest growth in exports between January and July 2020. Despite this favourable performance to date, however, the sector is keeping a close eye on developments in global trade tensions, especially between the US and EU and the Brexit negotiations.

The citrus fruit sector is one of the most important in the Spanish agrifood system and a leading player in international export markets. Its production structure is typically atomised, making it more difficult to modernise the farms, and the sector has some important challenges to tackle. In particular, strong competition from non-EU countries at a time when production costs are rising sharply, accentuated by a prolonged drought and the war in Ukraine. In any case, the figures suggest that Spain’s citrus production continues to be the most competitive in the world, thanks to its hard-won reputation as a product of the highest quality produced under the strictest health standards.