Factories are returning, but capital is retreating.
Madrid, May 2026. Spain has become one of Europe’s clearest examples of accelerated reindustrialisation, with 76% of companies now reporting a defined strategy to rethink where and how they produce. Two years ago, that figure stood at only 45%, which means Spanish firms are no longer treating industrial relocation as a theoretical response to crisis, but as a structural adjustment to a more unstable global economy.
The shift is being driven by geopolitical pressure, supply chain fragility and the growing realization that efficiency alone no longer guarantees competitiveness. Spanish executives increasingly see resilience as a strategic requirement, even when it raises short-term costs. That marks a profound change from the previous era of globalisation, when companies prioritized low-cost production, distant suppliers and lean inventories as signs of managerial sophistication.
Yet the new industrial momentum carries a contradiction. Across Europe and the United States, more companies now have reindustrialisation strategies, but planned investment for the next three years has fallen sharply. This suggests that firms are not abandoning the industrial transition; they are making it more selective, more digital and less dependent on massive physical expansion.
Artificial intelligence, automation and digital modelling are becoming the invisible infrastructure of this new industrial cycle. Instead of rebuilding every factory at home, companies are using technology to redesign supply chains, simulate risk, reduce waste and make nearshoring or friendshoring financially viable. Spain’s advantage will depend not only on attracting production, but on whether its companies can turn digital industrial intelligence into measurable productivity.
Europe’s approach also differs from the American model. While the United States leans toward reshoring, Europe is increasingly looking at friendshoring, placing production in allied or lower-risk countries rather than bringing everything back inside national borders. For Spain, this creates both opportunity and vulnerability: it can position itself as an industrial platform within Europe, but it must compete with Eastern Europe, North Africa and other Mediterranean corridors for investment.
The deeper issue is that reindustrialisation is no longer only an economic policy. It is a sovereignty strategy. Energy costs, rare materials, maritime disruption, tariff wars and technological dependency have turned factories into geopolitical assets. Spain’s challenge is to ensure that the current acceleration does not remain a corporate planning exercise, but becomes a durable industrial ecosystem capable of sustaining skilled jobs, innovation and strategic autonomy.
Information that anticipates futures. / Información que anticipa futuros.