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Could Spain Finally Be About to Join the 21st Century?
Becoming a chip-manufacturing hub makes a lot of sense for the country
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s €11 billion strategic plan for economic recovery and transformation (PERTE), which aims to encourage the domestic manufacture of chips and semiconductors — announced on Tuesday at the Wake Up Spain forum in Madrid, organized by leading daily El Español — has highlighted the long-standing need to modernize the country’s productive fabric.
Attracting the semiconductor industry to Spain is an ambitious idea, and one that many countries share; what’s more, Spain is at a disadvantage. Three or four decades ago, while our country was focused on construction, another economy then similar to ours in size and with a similar-sized population, South Korea, instead staked its future on technology and semiconductors. The facts speak for themselves: in 2000, Spain’s GDP still exceeded that of South Korea, but over the last 20 years, while Spain has contracted on four occasions, South Korea has maintained an upward trend, and today, after overtaking Spain in 2013, its economy is the 10th-largest in the world. This evolution is no coincidence, and reflects the fact that technology has become the most important variable conditioning an economy, in more and more ways.
Today, microchips and semiconductors are a fundamental part of our lives: they are to be found in all products that rely on electronics, and the current supply crisis due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is hitting many sectors hard. At the same time, making them requires skilled labor and is not particularly cost-sensitive, due to automation. For a country like Spain, where engineering talent is relatively abundant and the quality-price ratio of its graduates is beneficial compared to other neighboring countries, becoming a chip-manufacturing hub makes a lot of sense.
However, attracting investment from the companies who make them will not be easy. We are talking about a complex and highly fragmented industry: The people who design chips are not the same as those who…
