Spanish GDP on a per-capita basis, enough to overtake Japan’s but still firmly behind Korea’s.

The driver of Spain's growth is population growth via immigrant labor, with about 80% of Spanish job growth since 2022 down to the increase in foreign-born hires, with measures such as mass regularization granting residency permits to more than 1 million undocumented arrivals.

RE: De flesta kommer från Latinamerika och behöver inte gå på kursen Spanska för invandrare.

The other boon is tourism, which accounts for almost 13% of the economy

Spain’s population has jumped to almost 50 million from 36 million a half century ago. This means more workers, more spending and more tax receipts.

Spanish GDP has grown less impressively on a per-capita basis than in aggregate, enough to overtake Japan’s but still firmly behind Korea’s.

On a per-hour-worked basis, there’s a persistent gap with Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries.

Lionel Laurent Bloomberg 6 July 2026

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-06/how-spain-outgrew-south-korea