why expand to spain? 

The mission with Expand To Spain™️ is to attract international capital, startups and talent to Spain. I, Caroline, behind the project, believe there is so much potential to unlock through cross-border partnerships but the limited amount of online resources in English prevents many otherwise interested parties from finding out about it.

“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”

That is Yuval Noah Harari’s first sentence in his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”. He also talks about the luxury of having the time to investigate, to observe, to digest your impressions and experiences into solid intelligence and knowledge.

I have had the passion and the time to deep-dive into Spain’s tech startup and innovation ecosystem over the last years and have watched the evolution of the digital economy. There is a growing interest to learn about this space from an international perspective. I’m Swedish myself with a Latin soul from my Mexican great-grandmother.

To facilitate for the non-Spanish speaker, I made this report of 20 insights to provide a comprehensive overview in English. It contains much translated data from Spanish media and names of important players (startup founders, investors, accelerators and over-all influential people) are mentioned in a context that you are more likely to remember, and can use as a reference in your own investigation.

There is a piece about the startup hub in Valencia, which is especially close to my heart. I decided to leave my hometown Stockholm for a life in the sun and I ended up here after a friend of mine told me about this friendly city filled with orange trees. Although it is the 3rd biggest city in Spain, it was completely unknown to me at the time. To my pleasant surprise it was bubbling with startup activity and is helping other less known innovation hubs like Malaga and Bilbao to get found as well.