Spain | Regional Finances in 2025 and from 2003 to 2025

Summary

This study analyses the evolution of revenues, expenditures, budget balance, and debt of Spain’s autonomous communities from 2003 to 2025. It adjusts for the impact of atypical factors such as the pandemic in order to show the underlying deficit and the true financial situation.

Key points

• Key points:
• The regional budget balance rebounded in 2022 and 2023 due to inflation and the mechanics of settlement payments, but in 2024 and 2025 there is a clear improvement, moving closer to budgetary equilibrium.
• The underlying deficit, after stripping out atypical factors and extraordinary aid, has shown a continuous reduction since 2021, reaching a negative value for the first time in 2025, indicating a slight surplus.
• Real regional expenditure per capita grew by 36.4% between 2003 and 2025, driven by current expenditure net of interest payments, while investment fell to half of its initial value in 2017 and remains low.
• Regional debt increased almost fivefold in less than a decade after the Great Recession, stabilising at around 25% of national GDP during the recent economic recovery phase.

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