Why settle for a passing grade when you can aspire to a notable or outstanding one? It is, broadly speaking, the message that Brussels sends to Spain in its report on the Digital Decade 2026: the country is advancing correctly in its connectivity and digital transformation, but there are certain shortcomings that need to be corrected to make the definitive leap from having a good digital infrastructure to turning it into a truly digitized economy.
From Europe, they highlight the digital assets of Spain —a solid connectivity infrastructure, a population with good digital skills, and developed digital public services—, however, they also point out that the country is still not fully leveraging those strengths in the adoption of advanced technologies by companies and in the weight of ICT specialists within the labor market.
Companies
Spain has done a good part of its homework to be connected. The coverage of very high-capacity fixed networks reaches 96% and fiber to the premises also reaches 96%, while 5G coverage stands at 99.2%. In all three cases, the country is above the average of the European Union. It also has a proportion of SMEs with at least a basic level of digital intensity of 75.4%, also higher than the 71.4% that marks the European average.
It is when analyzing the most advanced technologies that the distortion appears. The clearest case is cloud. Only 37.9% of Spanish companies use cloud services, compared to 46.7% of the EU average and far from the European target of 75% by 2030. Spain is growing rapidly —the report notes an annual advance of 18%—, but starts from a position lower than that of its community partners.
The artificial intelligence presents a different picture. 20.3% of Spanish companies already use it, practically in line with the 20% of the European average. The problem arises when looking at the target set for the end of the decade: the EU aims for 75% of companies to use AI, cloud, or data analytics in the areas established by the Digital Decade. Spain still has a considerable journey ahead.
In data analysis, in fact, Spain starts from a more favorable position. 47.1% of companies use these technologies, compared to 39.9% of the community average. And 62.4% use at least one of the three considered technologies —AI, cloud, or data analysis—, practically in line with the 63.2% European average. The deficit, according to Brussels, is not so much in basic digitalization as in achieving that a greater number of companies reach advanced levels of digitalization.
Who makes the digital leap possible
The other gap is in the labor market. ICT specialists represent 4.8% of employment in Spain, compared to 5% in the EU. The Spanish goal for 2030 is to raise that proportion to 8.6%, while the European reference is approximately 10%.
The paradox is that Spain has more and more graduates in ICT disciplines, but that increase is not translating into an equivalent increase in their weight within total employment. The Commission believes that the country must continue working to retain those graduates and increase the presence of technological specialists in the labor market. It also calls for increasing the participation of women in studies and careers linked to ICT.
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Moreover, Brussels identifies room for improvement in the innovation ecosystem and in the capacity of companies to grow. Spain had 12 unicorns in the latest available data, compared to 324 in the EU as a whole. The Commission points to untapped potential in the scale-ups ecosystem and calls for facilitating the creation and expansion of companies, improving access to financing, and strengthening the links between research and the business fabric.
That is to say, the Spanish digital gap does not seem to be about getting companies access to a fast connection anymore. The challenge is what they do with it.
A more digital Administration than many companies
The contrast extends to the public sector. Spain achieves results above the European average in the main indicators of digital public services.
Digital services aimed at citizens score 91.9 out of 100, compared to 84.6 in the EU. In services aimed at companies, Spain reaches 95.3 points compared to 88.6 of the community average. Access to electronic medical records reaches 89.6 points, also above the 86.5 of the EU.
The Commission also recognizes the good Spanish performance in electronic administration and e-Health. But it introduces a caveat: there are differences between regions. Therefore, it recommends improving the digitalization of public services throughout the territory, reinforcing interoperability and cooperation between administrations, and paying special attention to the judicial system.
Recommendations from Brussels
The Commission recommends concentrating the next efforts on accelerating business digitalization, especially in cloud, promoting innovation and companies capable of scaling, reinforcing technological talent, and maintaining the development of strategic technologies such as semiconductors and quantum computing.
The country also has an important pool of resources to do so. Spain allocates 22.2 billion euros from its Recovery and Resilience Plan for digital transformation, 23% of the total plan, while another 4.9 billion from cohesion policy also contributes to that objective.
The challenge ahead is to convert that investment and the accumulated advantage in connectivity into something harder to measure with a coverage test: companies capable of adopting advanced technologies, sufficient workers to develop them, and an ecosystem capable of turning them into innovation and growth.
The Commission's conclusion points precisely in that direction: Spain starts from a solid position, but to achieve the European objectives of 2030 it needs to close the gaps that appear after the connection.