What does Spain offer as an international destination?

• Spain as a destination to develop new internationalization projects:

Spain has excellent trade agreements that contribute to a greater boost of its economy and very good conditions to undertake new alliances and projects. It also has strategic areas around the peninsula, good port connections, roads and air, adequate facilities and good communications and infrastructure.

• Spain as a destination to professionalize:

Spain has a wide range of study and professional practices in all branches. The country stands out as one of the countries with the highest reception of foreign students, through different modalities, for example, temporary residence permits and work for research, due to the rise of the field of research, development and innovation (I + D + i). Studying in Spain also opens the doors to professional internships that allow you to better understand the internal workings of a company. In addition, the country offers the possibility of carrying out and studying exchange programs being the best known, the Erasmus program through which students from all over the world, attracted by the Spanish culture, its climate and its diversity, find a great opportunity to learn spanish. 

• Spain has flagship cities in interculturality:

There are many Spanish cities that offer a diversity of leisure activities abroad and invite to have a greater contact with the Spanish culture, to have an active, open and dynamic lifestyle, for example: those related to art – museums, halls exhibitions, its renowned and varied cuisine, meetings that make these cities a meeting point and attraction of many cultures from all parts of the world.

We can also highlight that there are more and more, small and medium enterprises, young entrepreneurs, self-employed workers, e-commerce developers and start-ups that decide to embark on new projects in Spain. One of the main reasons is because Spain offers and makes available grants or subsidies through programs and economic financing, with the intention of contributing to greater economic growth and job creation. In addition, the different networking, coworking and crowfunding networks are increasingly booming.

In the business world, we can observe a trend of work trips to Spain. According to the joint study conducted by ICEX-Invest in Spain, Multinationals by Marca España and IESE, of the 700 foreign multinational companies surveyed, 95% will increase or maintain their investments in Spain. Highlighting the main factors that motivate it: good infrastructure, quality of life and market growth thanks to economic recovery.

The mainly cities that receive international workers are:

Madrid and Barcelona: As economic and financial centers of Spain, as well as the headquarters for corporate meetings and important events not only at a national level but also at an international level. Specifically, Barcelona becomes the «fifth most innovative city in Europe», according to the Barcelona 2017 Observatory Report.

Bilbao and Seville: they stand out for being cities with great wealth and great industrial development. On the other hand, Bilbao has always stood out for being an industrial city that stands out mainly in the steel industry and naval industry; nevertheless, it has undergone a transformation welcoming more industries, among others those of the technological sector.

There are other cities that stand out as Zaragoza (leading in the energy sector and development of electrical appliances) and Alicante (mainly, the agri-food sector).

When multinationals decide to internationalize their projects and services, they must take into account whether their foreign workers will be expatriated or displaced. For this, it is important, in the first place, to make the distinction between both figures:

• Expatriate: will be subject to the legislation of the State where it will provide its services (destination country) in regard to their working conditions, Social Security and tax.

• Displaced: will be subject to the legislation of the State of their country of origin with regard to their Social Security and labor conditions, the company must guarantee the minimum requirements established by the legislation of the country of destination. 

In Spain, a special regime for the mobility of international workers is provided for in Law 14/2013, of September 27, on support for entrepreneurs and their internationalization. It facilitates the transfer of workers to Spain, highlighting the following examples:

Highly qualified professionals: those workers who have great experience and a higher level of education and knowledge and technical nature, which makes it necessary to hire them for certain projects. These will be hired locally, that is, they will be workers who will be subject to the legislation of the State in which they will provide their services, the country of destination.

Intracompany: are those workers who are transferred from a company or another company of the same group or subsidiary established in Spain or another country, whose objective is to facilitate the transfer of workers and thus contribute to an improvement in the competitiveness of the Spanish economy. In this case, the workers will continue to be subject to the legislation of their country of origin.

Moreover, thanks to the right to free movement of people, citizens of the European Union, the European Economic Area (Iceland, Norway and Liechnstein) and Switzerland will be able to move and reside freely, including working within the European Union. This way, they can be established and work in Spain, either as displaced workers (subject to the legislation of their country of origin in matters of Social Security) or, as workers with a local contract in Spain and, therefore, assigned to the regime of Spanish Social Security.

Each company evaluates its internationalization strategy and its expatriation policy. For this it is very useful to hire the services of an Global Mobility agency that supports them in the management, planning and development of it. For more information you can read our article: Labor expatriation: Challenges and opportunities.