When someone says Spain is “behind on AI”, the aggregate number doesn’t back them up. What is actually happening in Spain is something else, and it is more interesting.
What the official figures say
According to Eurostat, in 2025 20.0% of EU enterprises with 10 or more employees used AI technologies, up from 13.5% in 2024. A 6.5-point jump in a single year.
In the 2024 data, Spain sat at 13.4% against an EU average of 13.5%. In other words: on the average, not behind it.
The problem appears when you break it down by size:
49.2% at large companies. 8.7% at SMEs. Almost a sixfold difference inside the same market, under the same regulation, in the same language, with the same vendors available.
Why SMEs are left out
It is not ignorance. In the conversations we have every week, the reasons repeat and none of them is “we didn’t know it existed”:
Nobody owns it. A large company has a data lead, a CIO, someone whose job is to evaluate this. At a 40-person firm, the IT manager is already saturated keeping what exists running.
The use case isn’t written down anywhere. The success stories in circulation come from companies with millions of transactions. A practice with 300 clients doesn’t recognise itself in them, even though its case is just as valid and considerably easier.
Fear of the six-figure project. The sector has been selling digital transformation for fifteen years and SMEs carry the scars. The phrase “AI project” evokes a budget they cannot absorb.
Regulatory doubt. The EU AI Act is perceived as an obstacle when, for the vast majority of SME use cases, it imposes barely any obligations.
What actually works at smaller companies
The SME advantage is real and almost nobody exploits it: you don’t have to coordinate twelve departments to change a process. What takes nine months of committees at a multinational is a two-week conversation here.
Projects we see working at 20- to 200-person companies share three traits:
- One process, not a strategy. Quotes, delivery notes, inbound email, job sheets. One.
- Four to eight weeks to something live. If the timeline is six months, it will be abandoned first.
- Measured in one named person’s hours, not corporate KPIs. “Marta spent 9 hours a week on this and now spends 2.”
The read for the next two years
With the European average climbing 6.5 points a year, the 8.7% of Spanish SMEs is the number with the most room to move — simply because that is where the headroom is.
The question is not whether your sector will adopt it. It is whether you do it while it is still an advantage, or once it is the minimum needed to compete. Those two moments are usually about eighteen months apart.