Spain has lost 142,024 businesses in the last ten years, going from 767,317 establishments to 625,293, according to data reported by The World. There are 39 net daily closures.
One in every five businesses that disappear in the country is a store. The business has a mortality rate of 8.4%, higher than the national average of 7.8%.
The facts. 68% of the closed businesses were self-employed without employees. Another 31% had between one and four workers. That is, 99% had less than five employees.
Aragon, Galicia, Castilla y León and the Basque Country have lost almost a quarter of their stores.
Yes, but. While small businesses collapse, large chains continue to grow. Mercadona invoiced 38.4 billion in 2023, 7% more than the previous year.
The paradox is evident: Spain today has 85,527 more companies than a decade ago, when we were just emerging from the crisis, but the local commercial fabric is disintegrating.
Between the lines. It’s not just that the consumer prefers the convenience of the supermarket. The problem is structural:
- Small businesses competed with exhausting hours and tiny margins against chains that negotiated prices with suppliers on a national scale.
- The shopkeeper who opened from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and made a living from his store can no longer sustain that model when a large supermarket sells cheaper, has a greater variety of products and closes at 9:30 p.m.
The pressure doesn’t just come from the consumer. Suppliers have also changed the game: they prefer one large buyer who simplifies distribution over hundreds of small, dispersed customers.
Local commerce has lost strength in both sales and purchases.
The contrast. There is one exception visible on the streets: convenience stores run mainly by Chinese and Pakistani merchants have proliferated. They maintain the model of endless days that Spanish self-employed people can no longer sustain: open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week, without fresh but with all the basics.
They have filled the gap left by the traditional grocer, but with a different equation:
- Intensive family work.
- Very tight margins.
- And a model that only works if the whole family is behind the counter.
It is the last stronghold of classic local commerce, but it reinforces the thesis: only those who accept conditions that an average Spanish self-employed person can no longer or do not want to assume survive survive.
The money trail. Cost inflation has killed the sector: electricity, rents, minimum wages and social contributions have risen while sales prices could barely move.
A self-employed person pays more to keep his premises open than he can make by selling. The figures confirm it: only 41.9% of companies born in 2018 were still active in 2023. The first year of life is lethal, with survival rates of 78.5% or lower.
Rising pressure. Touristification is now added to the historical problems:
- Tourist apartments have skyrocketed commercial rentals in central areas, expelling businesses that cannot compete with Airbnb hostels and apartments.
- María José Landaburu, from UATAE, sums it up: “If a self-employed person cannot rent premises in their neighborhood, if a business closes because its rent has tripled, that is expulsion.”
Main loser? The self-employed trade. Lorenzo Amor, from ATA, warns that they are “in free fall” and with them “the social cohesion generated by the businesses of our towns and cities” disappears.
The shopkeeper model, sustained for decades by endless hours and tight profitability, is becoming exhausted. The big chains have won by a landslide.
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Featured image | Richard Melick, Mercadona
