The companies integrated into groups concentrate two thirds of the business in Spain.

In Spain, modifying the regulation of business groups may require parliamentary or purely administrative procedures, depending on the rank of the rule to be changed. Very schematically: the higher the rule (law), the more intense the intervention of the Cortes; the lower it is (regulations, orders, circulars), the more the procedure is concentrated in the Government or supervisors.

1. Changes in laws (basic regulatory framework)

The definition of a group of companies, the tax regime of consolidated groups, or the bases of financial supervision are usually found in ordinary laws (for example, in the capital companies regulations, corporate tax, or banking regulation). To modify them, it is necessary to process a new law that reforms the previous one.

The general legislative reform scheme is:

• Initiative: the change can be presented by the Government (bill) or a subject with legislative initiative (parliamentary groups, Senate, regional assemblies, or, in certain cases, popular legislative initiative).
• Admission and consideration: the Board of the Congress admits the initiative for processing and, if it is a bill, the Plenary decides whether to consider it (i.e., whether to start processing it).
• Amendments and committee phase: parliamentary groups can propose specific changes (amendments) to the articles. A technical committee drafts a compromise text, especially relevant when definitions or consolidation criteria of business groups are modified.
• Committee report and Plenary: the competent committee approves a report that is submitted to the Congress Plenary, where the text is debated and voted on.
• Processing in the Senate: the approved text is sent to the Senate, which can approve it as is, introduce amendments, or propose a veto. If it introduces changes, the Congress has the final say.
• Sanction, promulgation, and publication: the law is sanctioned by the King, promulgated, and published in the Official State Gazette (BOE). Only then does the reform of the regulation of business groups come into force (on the indicated date or, failing that, after 20 days).

2. Regulatory changes: royal decrees and ministerial orders

Many technical aspects of business groups (corporate tax regulations, rules on consolidated accounts, declaration models, etc.) are developed through royal decrees of the Government or ministerial orders (for example, from the Ministry of Finance or Justice).

The typical procedure is administrative, not parliamentary:

• Internal initiative: the competent ministry drafts a proposal, often supported by technical-legal and impact reports (economic, gender, etc.).
• Hearing and public information procedure: when appropriate, a period is opened for companies, associations, and citizens to make allegations about the draft royal decree or order.
• Mandatory reports: consultative bodies (for example, the Council of State), other ministries, or independent authorities may intervene, depending on the subject.
• Approval:
  • Royal decrees are approved in the Council of Ministers.
  • Ministerial orders are signed by the competent minister, sometimes with the approval of Finance or other departments if they have tax or budgetary impact.
• Publication in the BOE: the regulatory modification takes effect from the date provided in the text itself.

Although Parliament does not vote on these changes, it can politically control them through questions, interpellations, or non-legislative motions, and even force legal reforms if it considers the regulatory development of business groups inadequate.

3. Circulars and instructions from supervisors and technical bodies

In the accounting and financial field, an important part of the regulation of groups (consolidation, reporting, solvency of consolidable groups, etc.) is specified in:

• Circulars from the CNMV, the Bank of Spain, or other supervisors.
• Resolutions and instructions from bodies such as the Institute of Accounting and Auditing (ICAC) or the Directorate General of Taxes.

Their modification follows an internal procedure of the issuing body:

• Technical draft: the body drafts a circular or resolution draft, usually to adapt the regulation of business groups to changes in European regulations or international standards.
• Sector consultation or hearing: a consultation procedure is usually opened for affected entities (credit institutions, investment service companies, large groups, professional associations, etc.).
• Supervision report and, if applicable, from other bodies: sometimes ministries (for example, Economic Affairs or Finance) intervene to verify coherence with the legal and regulatory framework.
• Approval by the competent body: the CNMV or Bank of Spain board, or the ICAC management, formally adopt the circular or resolution.
• Publication in the BOE: the circular or resolution is inserted in the BOE and comes into force as provided in its final provision.

4. Interaction between regulatory levels

In practice, modifying the regulation of business groups may require acting on several levels at once: law reform (for example, commercial or tax regulations), adaptation of regulations through royal decrees, and fine-tuning through ministerial orders and supervisors’ circulars. The basic principle is that lower-level rules cannot contradict higher-level ones, so any relevant material change usually starts at the legal level and then unfolds downward.

The Ministry of Industry (now Ministry of Industry and Tourism, according to the latest royal decrees on structure) does not exercise a “horizontal supervisor” of large companies comparable to the Bank of Spain or the CNMV, but it does concentrate a broad set of competencies of technical regulation, authorization, registration, inspection, and sanction over industrial activity and certain markets, which fully affect large companies and business groups.

Basic regulatory framework

The legal core of these competencies is mainly found in:

• The Law 21/1992, on Industry (BOE), which sets the bases for the regulation of industrial activities and the role of the General State Administration in matters of industrial safety and quality, registration of establishments, and infractions and sanctions.
• The Law 32/2014, on Metrology (BOE), which regulates the state metrological control (accuracy of measuring instruments) and establishes a market surveillance system with state and regional intervention.
• A broad constellation of technical regulations (e.g., on pressure equipment, elevators, electromagnetic compatibility, mining safety, or the regulation of infrastructure for industrial quality and safety) issued under the Industry Law and European directives.
• The general administrative regime laws (Laws 39/2015 and 40/2015) and the royal decrees on departmental structure (such as Royal Decree 829/2023, which restructures ministries, or the rules developing the basic organic structure of Industry), which distribute functions among state secretariats, general directorates, and attached bodies.

Types of powers over business activity

Based on this regulatory framework, the Ministry of Industry exercises, in relation to companies (large or not) operating in industrial sectors and foreign trade of products:

• Technical regulatory power: drafting industrial safety regulations (e.g., on machinery, pressure equipment, lifting devices, electrical installations, industrial products in general) and development of the Metrology Law. These rules condition the design, manufacture, marketing, and commissioning of industrial products used or manufactured by large business groups.
• Authorization and registration: within the framework of Law 21/1992 and the Integrated Industrial Registry Regulation, the ministry:
  • Manages or coordinates the registry of industrial establishments and installations at the state level.
  • Authorizes and supervises control and metrological verification bodies acting on companies (certification, inspection, etc.).
  • Participates in prior control or notification of certain products subject to CE marking and essential safety requirements.
• Inspection and market surveillance: through its general directorates and attached bodies, it promotes inspections on:
  • The compliance with industrial safety regulations in company installations and products.
  • The metrological conformity of measuring instruments used in commercial transactions, energy, transport, etc.
  • The control of products in foreign trade (technical standards, quality, and safety of imported or exported products).
  These functions are exercised in very close coordination with autonomous communities, which have relevant executive competencies.
• Sanctioning power: the Industry Law and the Metrology Law typify infractions (minor, serious, and very serious) for non-compliance with technical and safety regulations, assigning to the State, and particularly to the ministry competent in industry, the imposition of fines, closures, suspension of activity, or product withdrawal within their areas of competence.
• Promotion and planning functions: although not “control” in the strict sense, the numerous aid programs, subsidies, support for internationalization, digitalization, and improvement of industrial productivity condition the behavior of large companies and groups, through:
  • Access criteria for aid (SMEs versus large companies, compliance requirements, sustainability, etc.).
  • State-level industrial plans and strategies that guide investments and sectoral restructurings.

Relationship with other supervisors and material scope

The Ministry of Industry is not a transversal supervisor of business groups (that role falls, depending on the case, to the CNMC for competition and certain regulated sectors, to the CNMV for securities markets, or to the Bank of Spain for credit institutions). Its scope focuses on:

• Industrial safety and quality of products and installations.
• Metrological control and reliability of measurements used in economic transactions.
• Certain aspects of goods trade (especially at the border).

In these fields, large companies and groups — industrial, energy, infrastructure, distribution, etc. — are subject to its regulations, inspections carried out directly or through control bodies supervised by the ministry, and its sanctioning regime. The control is, therefore, sectoral and technical, and is articulated in coordination with other economic ministries, autonomous communities, and independent authorities.

With the information available from the consulted sources, it has been possible to identify one parliamentary initiative clearly directly linked to business concentration and its impact on the Spanish market in the XV Legislature. However, the very functioning of the Congress and Senate registers prevents, with this partial search, offering a closed total number of initiatives on the subject: the volume of questions, motions, and proposals is very high and would require a systematic and exhaustive exploitation of both registers.

Clearly identified initiative

The only initiative unequivocally located in the research is an initiative registered in the Congress that questions the Government about “the measures planned to strengthen the guarantees of the right to information in the face of the current concentration of the dissemination of informative and audiovisual content on private platforms, digital operators, and paid services” (reg. no. 124680), published in the Official Bulletin of the General Courts on September 14, 2026.

This initiative is situated at the intersection between operator concentration and market functioning in a specific sector: the market for informative and audiovisual content in Spain. The text argues that the growing concentration of supply in the hands of large private platforms and paid services may have consequences on:

• The informative pluralism and diversity of content.
• The capacity of choice of consumers and users.
• The competitive balance in the Spanish market for audiovisual communication services and digital platforms.

In this sense, the initiative fits within the logic of competition policies: it is not limited to a sectoral media issue but explicitly connects business concentration with the structure and functioning of the Spanish market in a very specific area. It can be consulted on the Congress portal through the corresponding Bulletin of the XV Legislature (link to the BOCG).

Why it is not possible to give an exact total number

The question you ask is broad: it covers “all parliamentary initiatives” of the legislature on business concentration and its impact on the Spanish market, without limiting type (laws, non-legislative motions, questions, motions, appearances, etc.) or sector (energy, telecommunications, financial, food, distribution, etc.).

According to the design of the portals of the Congress and the Senate, initiatives are registered with very varied descriptors and titles. A semantic search returns:

• Motions and economic debates that deal with business growth, regulatory barriers, or market fragmentation, without always explicitly mentioning “business concentration.”
• Texts and debates where reference is made to market concentration in specific sectors (energy, distribution, telecommunications, banking, etc.) within broader initiatives.
• Questions and proposals focusing on market unity, competition, or market power, where concentration is an implicit element but not necessarily the main object.

With this thematic dispersion, and given that the XV Legislature is still open, the sources themselves indicate that it is not rigorous to state a total number of initiatives without applying a systematic exploitation methodology (for example, manually classifying all initiatives on economy, industry, competition, and consumption to determine in which business concentration is the main object and not just context).

Prudent response and how to refine the count

Consequently, the most prudent formulation with verifiable data is: one parliamentary initiative has been identified in the XV Legislature whose main object is business concentration and its impact on the Spanish market, in the field of informative and audiovisual content. The actual number of initiatives addressing business concentration more broadly or sectorally could be higher, but it would require specific work mining the Congress and Senate registers beyond the spot searches performed.

If you are interested in a more refined count, it is possible to narrow it down, for example:

• Only to the Congress or only to the Senate.
• To certain types of initiatives: laws and non-legislative motions, excluding questions and requests for reports.
• To specific sectors (energy, telecommunications, financial, distribution…) where concentration is a recognized problem.

With these filters, the count can be made more precise and comparable, and serve as a basis to analyze the intensity of parliamentary attention to the phenomenon of business concentration in the different Spanish markets.