Spain bate commercial recordswhile operating without strategic terrain reading. And that has a price that Nadie is counting.
España cerró 2025 con the highest export value in its history: 387,100 million euros. This fact was celebrated with the same inertia with which all records are celebrated, amid titles, institutional honors and the day after.
But no one mentioned it the trade deficit disappeared by 47% in just one year. Que las imports increased sixfold faster than export. Spain advanced 0.7%, while the European average suffered 2.4%.
Only one in four Spanish companies identified geopolitical risks with anticipation
It is clear that Spain is exporting more than ever, but within its own bloc it will move faster. In an area where the rules of the game change every quarter, the slowest that your allies are is erosion that no duel.
And what no fight can’t fix.
Our thesis
Spain sells in a system that does not help in pumping, exporting volume, but without exporting energy. And the distance between the two is within the capacity that cannot be sufficiently developed in the Spanish corporate team: structural risk prediction.
It’s not about predicting the future. As for the strengths that condition it before it shows up in price, en orange, en decree or en pérdida.
What does this mean?
When the Trump administration takes over oranges by 15% to European products in 2025The Spanish agri-food industry lost in two months the total growth accumulated in the current market over the last decade.
Las Olive oil exports to the USA accounted for 27.7%. Las de wine, 14%. España pidió exenciones. El Supreme Court of the United States stomped on oranges in court.
Although the industry breathed, the vexing question continues unanswered: why did the tribunal fail to achieve the opposite? You don’t have it for that a plan or a possible scenario. No need to read ahead. Spain reacted without expectations.
But while I hoped for this sentence, Morocco, Argentina and Chile you occupy the suit. In commercial geopolitics, the heart that beats inactivityno, if he renews Lt inertia. Simple (the American importer, who found that the branded product was sold cheaper, did not go there just out of nostalgia).
The management of a large Spanish agri-food company expressed this in a sentence worth noting: “We enter the oranges on the same day as our American customers.” Most of my driving looks like surprise driving.
A paradox that defines Spanish vulnerability
El Bank of Spain he identified geopolitical tensions (e.g. inflation, type of interest and peevishness) as the main challenge for the stability of the financial system. The sub-government institution set up the bank in February 2026 to incorporate it I am geopolitical In these areas of analysis, because without foresight, entities cannot “react in time to possible shocks”.
Yes, 90% of European CFOs consider geopolitics among their top three interests (the highest level since the situation has existed, higher than the record after the invasion of Ukraine) and in general in Spain 84% of directors acknowledge that geopolitical uncertainty will limit your growth plans.
But here comes the data that changes everything: the following Hill+Knowlton, “Only one in four Spanish companies would identify geopolitical risks with anticipation. One in four.” For the most part, the idea that “geopolitics” does not correspond to management until it responds to international impacts continues to prevail.
The remaining 75% will therefore handle the impact retroactively. He paid the price of surprise. And this coast bears a name: eroded margins, renegotiated Gulf contracts, held projects and opportunities captured by competitors leaving the country.
Heat lost through inactivity cannot be recovered due to inertia. An American importer who found that the name brand was selling for less.
What is at stake is not an academic abstraction. Es capital: a CAPEX Admittedly, it was blocked by a regulatory change that was not anticipated… one M&A operations This understanding of synergies is changed by the sudden political situation… deuda structured low tax bills that change mid-cycle… administrative permission this is enough to destroy expected profitability… or a to write down which does not respond to market error, to an incomplete reading of the institutional environment.
When it comes down to it, let’s not talk about geopolitics. Let’s talk about balance.
Latin America: espejismo de la proximity
64% of Spanish businesses expect their turnover in Latin America to grow over the next three years. However, the share of companies planning to increase turnover fell from 76% to 63% in just one year. En pymes, from 80% to 50%.
Cause declared e.g Trump. The real cause is deeper: when uncertainty strikes, companies that care about the country’s structural understanding slow down. Esperan. Out qué pasa. This person’s rational response is not clear.
Mexico it follows that it is the first destiny. Colombia, Chile and Peru follow them. But 20% of companies identify it Chinese expertise how to enjoy yourself in the region. El Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos he suggests that Spain be placed as it is hub the entry of Latin American companies into Europe. It is a structural opportunity of the first order. But it requires a sophisticated reading that goes far beyond the casual standard landscape.
Cultural proximity to Latin America is a real adventure. It’s also a trip: creates the illusion that there is a market because the language is shared. But those who define the operation in Mexico, Colombia or Brazil are not linguists. They are institutions, regulators and politicians. Yes, proximity does not protect. Let’s go to sleep.
800,000 pages and one blind spot
In 2024 alone, Spain will generate more than 800,000 regulatory production pages. 90% of CEOs identify regulatory risk as a key strategic issue at the top of the macroeconomic environment.
But the regulatory challenge is not the visible head of a deeper challenge: the institutional challenge and the geopolitical movement that creates it. Rules do not appear spontaneously. They are the product of strong correlations between states, blocs and agendas that move at a speed for which the legal department of Spanish society is not equipped. Yes, here only the standard, when published in the BOE, is late by definition.
Wind of 2027
In my previous article I commented that Spain is making a comeback deficit to 2.5% of GDP y la 100% discount from the beginning of 2019. the growth 2.6%, which is the highest in Europe.
But Paraguay will take over the government from 2027 A tool for recovery and resilience. The new ones are entering European tax regulations. Gas pressure defense if sum al gasto en pensionswhich the IMF plans to raise by 4% of GDP by 2050, with the fund advising that “most of the risks are to the bottom”.
How many Spanish companies now integrate a political, regulatory and institutional reading in their decisions (working in their own Spain), but not as perception management, nor as a current context, but as a structural analysis of the forces that influence their operation?
The question is not rhetorical, and Hill+Knowlton answered it: one of each.
Spain doesn’t have a data problem. There’s the problem of Marc… and the comfort of consent.
The data exists; electricity Business Intelligence, Big Data and AI I’m ready for everyone. There is plenty of macroeconomic information. Moose assessment arrive on time. General consultants produce vast amounts of information.
But when projections and predictions appear one after the other, deviation happens “external shock”; therefore unpredictable. Instead of variable modeling, geopolitics becomes a methodological explanation. And what is not modeled will surprise.
Structural reading requires a connection decision to grow oranges in Washington with one the loss of Middle Eastern cooking. Regulatory reform in Brussels with the paralysis of the project in Huelva. Institutional crisis in Colombia sa to write down on the IBEX account balance. Y a a change in the political cycle in Spain with the inversion block that kept you green.
So it’s not information. This is structural reading. It is the discipline of building architecture before it is reflected in the price. Because prices are a snapshot of the present, but the structure of the solution describes the future. And only those who see the structure before the crystal have a real edge.
Spain exports worth 387,000 million euros. But exporting is not a decision. And the gap between all these things is the main strategic blind spot of the Spanish business team today.
The competitive stage is not just about performing better, but interpreting earlier. So the question is not that geopolitics matters. The organization integrates this into its capital decisions before the environment is forced to respond.
***José Parejo is the founder and CEO of Jose Parejo & Associates, which provides structural analysis and systems forecasting for public institutions and strategic companies.***
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