In the FT-Statista-Sifted ranking of startup hubs for 2024, Spain and Portugal score generally higher than all other European countries, with the exception of the UK and Germany.
In Spain, it was Barcelona-based programs that had the best results, due to their low costs, the city's supportive ecosystem, and the wealth of available talent.
Data provider Startup Heatmap Europe ranks third, behind London and Berlin, while website EU-Startups.com ranks sixth. Either way, Barcelona is ahead of Madrid and, with the exception of Munich, is the only city in the top ten that is not a financial capital.
Recommended
Entrepreneurs cite the Catalan city's welcoming, accessible programs and support, as well as the weather, culture and low costs of living.
“If you want to come and start something, you can because of the private support networks,” says Elliot Luke, co-founder of BCN FinTech, a non-profit organization that aims to foster Barcelona's emerging fintech community.
“Barcelona is a big city but it's not. Maybe that small town feel in a big city means that once you get into the system, you can move quickly.
Recommended
According to Tech Barcelona, one of several hubs serving the city's thriving startup scene, there are 2,102 startups in Catalonia, up 4 percent from last year. In 2022, it had total revenues of €2.2 billion and employed 20,665 people.
There are slightly more startups in Madrid, but according to Miguel Ferrer of Adigital, a tech hub in the capital, these numbers are open to dispute because it is not clear whether the definition of a startup, as stipulated in the new companies law, is the one being implemented. Apply it.
The Start-up Law, which came into force in January 2023, aims to simplify bureaucracy, increase incentives, and reduce the minimum capital required to set up a company in Spain.
Miquel Martí, CEO of Tech Barcelona, lists Barcelona's advantages as good infrastructure, established research centres, political support, and top-tier business schools – all of which lead global companies to choose the city for their digital hubs.
Martí agrees that Barcelona is more accessible to outsiders than Madrid.
Madrid is more oriented towards the internal market and the Latin American market and has fewer international business people. The lingua franca in the Madrid startup scene is Spanish; In Barcelona, it's English.
“Catalanians have always been entrepreneurs,” says Alex Rodriguez Bacardet, founder and CEO of MarsBased, a development consultancy specializing in web and mobile applications. “Before, we were opening shops. Now, we are doing start-ups. In Madrid, there is less pressure to create businesses because a lot of them are already there.
As Ferrer points out, Madrid has the advantage of being a financial capital, with a higher concentration of venture capital groups, and is home to many of Spain's largest companies and banks.
As a result, Madrid is dominated by digital services companies, e-commerce and real estate startups; While in Barcelona, there is fintech, mobility, logistics, design and, above all, health.
For Catalans, the silver lining of the pandemic has been the rise of telemedicine and the need for technology companies aligned with health and pharmaceuticals. This is helped by the fact that groups such as Novartis are based in the city, which AstraZeneca will soon join.
But there are downsides: most notably bureaucracy in Spain; Unhelpful tax code; And the punitive social security system. For these reasons, many startups are registered outside the country. “If Spain really wants to compete with Germany, France and the Netherlands, it has to reform the bureaucracy that slows everything down, and accept that it may lose some revenue in the short term,” says Locke, even after some improvements under the new law. Initiation law.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese capital Lisbon is also rising in the rankings, although it is far from fulfilling its potential, according to Barcelona-based Portuguese entrepreneur Julieta Rove. It has just completed a funding round for FlamAid, a personal defense tool for women that, in addition to transmitting a 110-decibel alarm, sends GPS coordinates to police and emergency services.
“Barcelona is very welcoming and people are willing to help you,” Roof says. “Portugal is much more conservative. There is less support than here.”
While tax breaks have made Lisbon attractive to digital nomads, “It's also difficult to get support if your company is not based in Portugal,” says Ruff. “It makes sense because it means the money stays in Portugal, but it also means investors are looking elsewhere.”
Barcelona is proud of its successes, despite the bureaucracy. One example is Glovo, the global food delivery company founded in the city in 2015 and currently valued at $1.2 billion.
But Rodriguez laments that some view Glovo as a role model for Barcelona startups, while many others are trying to make a more positive social impact. “So you can get a burger delivered at 2 a.m., but where's the innovation in that?” Asked. “What are you contributing to society?”
He prefers to talk about Parlem, a start-up telecoms company that communicates primarily in Catalan, thus cutting itself off from global markets, but which succeeds in the city precisely because of its local appeal.
However, Rodriguez accepts that such fierce independence could limit growth: he does not believe Barcelona will overtake London, Paris or Amsterdam as Europe's leading startup hub.
