Investment in innovation, that destined for scientific and technological research, has not fully recovered across the entire Spanish territory. Since the outbreak of the Great Recession, 40% of provinces maintain spending below that invested before 2008, due especially to the cuts made between 2010 and 2015. In Spain, the decrease was 13.8%, which translated into more than 1.5 billion euros. This drop has not been compensated in 20 territorial entities, according to the conclusions of the report 50 years of economic, social, business and institutional evolution of the provinces in Spain, prepared by the General Council of Economists of Spain and the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and presented this Thursday.
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In absolute terms, the provinces that made the biggest cuts in that five-year period after the outbreak of the crisis were Madrid and Barcelona, which reduced their spending by 374 and 86 million euros, respectively. However, between 2015 and 2020, they compensated for this reduction, as the former invested 772 million and the latter allocated 377 million. The opposite case, the report highlights, was Cantabria and Asturias, which “suffered severe cuts in their internal spending on innovation, exceeding 30%, which have not yet been compensated.” Several provinces also reduced their investment by more than 20%, such as Albacete, Badajoz, Cáceres, or Cuenca. The study also focuses on La Rioja, which it describes as “especially worrying,” since far from recovering, it registered a new decrease of 6.8 million between 2020 and 2025, aggravating the setback of 13.7 million suffered in the previous five-year period.
If the focus is broadened and an analysis of the last 25 years is carried out, the data is more positive. In 2000, Spanish provinces spent more than 5.7 billion euros on this item, while in 2024, the figure rises to almost 24 billion. Furthermore, in this period, relative growth has been particularly intense in territories “traditionally less associated with innovative activity,” such as Melilla (+332%), Ceuta (+280%), or Cantabria (+236%). With these figures, Raúl Mínguez, director of the Studies Service of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, has pointed out that Spain “presents a competitive and resilient panorama, although still with room to continue boosting productivity and innovation.”
When attention is paid to the territorial distribution of these investments relative to GDP, a clear dominance of the Community of Madrid and Catalonia is shown. The five provinces that make up these two autonomous communities concentrated more than half of the spending on scientific and technological research (51%), followed by Andalusia (9.7%) and the Basque Country (8.8%). This dominance of the two major Spanish autonomous communities shows, for Miguel Ángel Vázquez Taín, president of the General Council of Economists of Spain, that “certain territorial imbalances and structural challenges still persist that condition the possibilities of progress in some territories.”
This investment in innovation can be made by both public administrations and companies. The study highlights that in the first case, a “stable structural distribution” is detected, but it shows more problems in the private sector. Thus, comparing 2024 with 2020, a “significant setback” is detected in the number of scientific and technological companies in “key places” such as Madrid, the Basque Country, La Rioja, the Balearic Islands, and Cantabria. Furthermore, the average annual accumulated rate since 1981 — which measures the relationship between business R&D expenditure and GDP — shows negative values in most provinces and an average annual growth of 0.2%. This translates, the report highlights, into “a relative loss of innovative effort in the economic structure of the territories.”
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Same pattern in employment
The study also analyzes employees working in the scientific and technological research sector, such as technicians, assistants, and researchers, and the behavior is similar to the investment level. Thus, during the period of the Great Recession (2010-2015), most provinces reduced their workforces by between 2% and 26%, and only Gipuzkoa, Lleida, Álava, Bizkaia, and Málaga managed to avoid this reduction. If the 21st century so far is analyzed, the number of workers grew from 174,000 to 295,000 in 2025.
The authors again highlight La Rioja’s poor performance, noting that the reduction in employment extended beyond the general recession: in the 2015-2020 period, this province maintained “the negative trend,” registering an additional 14% decrease in its personnel in R&D activities. In the specific case of researchers, the criticism goes to the Canary Islands, as the 6% reduction in these employees is “worrying” for not following the national trend.
In this area, the only indicator that resists the impact of this crisis is the level of female employment in this sector, which is shown to be “resilient,” the report assures. Thus, between 2010 and 2015, the number of women working in these professions grew by 6,000 people and only registered declines in Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In the last 20 years, it increased by 33,000, which, the study states, “shows that the presence of women in this labor market has normalized.”
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