La Caixa Foundation (with its 100% subsidiary CriteriaCaixa), El Corte Inglés Group; CaixaBank Group; Telefónica Group, Inditex, Banco Santander Group, Mercadona, Iberdrola, Cellnex Telecom and Meliá Hotels International are the 10 business groups that make the greatest socioeconomic contribution to the Spanish GDP.
“The contribution of companies to the wealth of a country (Gross Domestic Product, GDP) is also its greatest social contribution“, concludes the Advice Business Success Study carried out by Advice Strategic Consultants in its autumn/winter wave of 2025. “In other times when the role of the state and companies – economically and socially – was clearly defined, possibly there would not have been such a strong assumption of social and economic commitment to the country by private companies,” says Jorge Díaz Cardiel, managing partner of Advice Strategic Consultants. – In 2025, this perception of 92% of opinion leaders interviewed by Advice (panel of 1,000 businessmen, managers, investors, analysts, academics, journalists) are supported by strong structural changes, which occurred in a short space of time.
Global geopolitical, economic, technological and business context
Some of the factors that affect opinion leaders’ perception of the socioeconomic contribution of private companies to GDP are:
- Global economic uncertainty: continuous revision of forecasts
- The United States is no longer a 100% committed partner with Europe
- Tariff trade war started by the US
- Technological – digital war between the US and China and consequences for Europe
- Economic-business turn towards the Defense sector
- Europe is “off the hook” in the digital race for Artificial Intelligence and Quantum
- The “disinformation” caused by interested actors, especially in social networks.
- Appearance of redefining the role of the state in the economy:
- Greater state intervention in private companies in the US from the Trump Administration while they want to privatize education and health
- China continues with its communist political model that uses state capitalism. But he has withdrawn financing from his companies due to debt.
The (apparently) erratic economic policy of Trump-USA
“The economic policy of the United States with, at times, a strong reduction in the weight of the state (elimination of the federal Department of Education whose powers will pass to the states) and, at other times, exerting strong influence: entry of the government into a private company like Intel; promotion of the Stargate Artificial Intelligence project with Oracle, Open AI, SoftBank, Microsoft and Nvidia; the trade war that penalizes foreign imports with tariffs and also North American companies that do not manufacture on American soil; the state promotion of large contracts of technology companies and banks with third countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE (Emirates). Trump gives permission to Nvidia and Apple to sell in China, in exchange for 25% of sales; Trump gets involved in the fight to Buy Warner Bros. Discovery in favor of Paramount’s offer. At the same time, Trump wants to dismantle Barack Obama’s healthcare model (Obamacare). It may seem that Trump’s behavior is arbitrary…, in reality he pursues an ideological objective when he wants to privatize health and education, for example, but involve the government and the state in the most lucrative pieces of the economy: large private companies” (Excerpt from the Focus Group of opinion leaders in Madrid on Trump’s policy and its contradictions).
Meanwhile, China continues with its communist political model that “uses” state capitalism in favor of the government, the party and the army; and the United States oscillates between the most absolute free market and arbitrary intervention in economic and business life, Europe finds itself, bewildered and in search of its own model.
Spain, a country of SMEs (99.80%) with an economy driven by large companies (0.20%)
The quantitative survey among opinion leaders carried out by Advice Strategic Consultants during the months of September, October and November 2025 concludes that “the role of large companies is essential for the economic growth of the country”. Additionally and in parallel, large Spanish systemic companies provide workload to SMEs (99.80% of the total number of companies or 3,503,285 firms, as of mid-November 2025, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE; “Demographic Survey of Spanish Companies, November 12, 2025). 54% of the total are “microenterprises and SMEs without salaries.” The number of large companies, according to the INE, is 7,006 in 2025.
The Top 10 companies with the highest socioeconomic contribution to GDP
Of the largest companies in Spain (more than 500 employees, among the 7,000 large companies), opinion leaders emphasize that “Those that contribute the most and boost the GDP are Fundación La Caixa (associated with its 100% subsidiary CriteriaCaixa), Grupo El Corte Inglés; CaixaBank Group; Telefónica Group, Inditex, Banco Santander Group, Mercadona, Iberdrola, Cellnex Telecom and Meliá Hotels International”.
At the end of 2025, the consideration that opinion leaders have of the contribution to Spanish GDP of large companies is dual: “socioeconomic contribution”:
- Direct economic contribution to GDP through billing, sales, profit and tax payments; and indirectly through the hiring of local suppliers, especially SMEs, microbusinesses and the self-employed.
- Social contribution: the principle of “giving back to society what companies have received from it” is a strong trend in 2025 and economic and business action is associated with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Sustainability and ESG. The latter, ESG, is being reformulated by all groups of Stakeholders, especially by investors and analysts because ROI (return on investment) is demanded and that social action is not just “saying” but primarily “doing.”
Opinion leaders, 99%, emphasize the role of large Spanish private companies in the socioeconomic contribution to the country.
The role of the Spanish state in companies (beyond the economy)
Opinion leaders wonder if there is a redefinition of the role of the state in business life, with the entry of the SEPI (dependent on the Ministry of Finance) in several Spanish systemic companies, until now private.
But, at the same time, they point out the growing role that the Spanish state plays in business life by participating in the shareholding of companies that, until recently, were completely private: SEPI has stakes in INDRA, Telefónica, Hispasat, Redeia, Enagás and Ebro Foods, among others. The cases of INDRA, Hispasat and Redeia are related: SEPI acquired 28% of the capital of INDRA, who in turn has purchased 90% of Hispasat from Redeia, where SEPI owns 20% of the capital. SEPI enters Talgo, with 8% of the capital. SEPI was already a reference shareholder in Grupo Correos, Mercasa, Navantia, Hunosa, Enosa, Agencia EFE, etc. And its leitmotif is “SEPI: we contribute to the economic and social development of the country.”
The Top-10 Spanish companies and their socioeconomic contribution to GDP (2025)
The economic reality of Spain today highlights the need to have large national business and financial groups, to be able to compete in Europe and in a global context, with the United States and China, especially given the context summarized above. This is highlighted by a large majority of opinion leaders (92%) consulted by Advice Strategic Consultants in the Advice Business Success Study of Winter 2025, thirty-third (wave 33), which La Caixa Foundation is named first, for its social action and, economically, because it is the owner of CriteriaCaixa, the first Spanish business group and investor.with 30,000 million euros in managed assets and shareholdings in systemic Spanish companies such as CaixaBank (32%), Naturgy (26%) and Telefónica (9.9%).
The Study also concludes that, this year 2025, La Caixa Foundation (100% owner of its subsidiary CriteriaCaixa) is the private entity that contributes the most to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Spain. La Caixa Foundation is characterized by a strong social commitment and a vocation to work in favor of the general interest. In addition, Fundación La Caixa is the owner (100%) of the financial holding company CriteriaCaixawhich manages its business assets. And it has significant stakes in systemic Spanish companies such as CaixaBank (32%), Naturgy (26%), Telefónica (9,99%), ACS Group (10%), Inmobiliaria Colonial (17,32%); Veolia (5%), Inbursa (10%); AGBAR (15%), Interparking (18%) and other large companies.
The panel of opinion leaders consulted by Advice Strategic Consultants in the spring of 2024, highlights the “economic, business and financial weight of Fundación La Caixa -through CriteriaCaixa-, in the Spanish economy. At the same time, businessmen, managers, analysts, journalists, and academics state that they are aware that CriteriaCaixa’s investments are intended to guarantee the future of the La Caixa Foundation’s Social Work, whose budget, in 2025, is 655 million euros.”says Jorge Díaz Cardiel, general managing partner of Advice Strategic Consultants, a consulting firm that has carried out the Advice Study of Business Success among opinion leaders and the general population and SMEs.
Recently, the announcement of the alignment of CriteriaCaixa’s Strategic Plan with that of its sole shareholder, Fundación La Caixa, “has aroused the interest of Spanish opinion leaders who, 88%, highlight that “La Caixa Foundation (and its subsidiary CriteriaCaixa) is the main private business group in Spain, both for its social contribution and for its contribution to the Spanish GDP”.
La Caixa Foundation is followed in importance by Grupo El Corte Inglés; CaixaBank; Telefónica Inditex, Santander, Mercadona, Iberdrola, Cellnex Telecom, Meliá Hotels International.
Jorge Díaz-Cardiel. Managing Partner of Advice Strategic Consultants. Economist, Sociologist, Lawyer, Historian, Philosopher and Journalist. Author of more than a thousand articles on economics and international relations, he has published twenty books.
