Brits help drive Spain’s autónomo boom as Spanish self-employed numbers fall

If you run your own business in Spain, you will know that being autónomo is not exactly the easy option. The bills still arrive, customers still need finding and there is no employer waiting to pay you at the end of the month. Yet despite the difficulties, the number of people working for themselves in Spain has grown over the past four years, although the figures reveal a striking change in who is behind that growth.

Spain has gained 132,466 foreign autónomos since July 2022, while the number of self-employed Spanish nationals has fallen by 7,630, according to new figures from the Unión de Profesionales y Trabajadores Autónomos (UPTA), based on Social Security data. The result is that foreign workers are now responsible for more than the entire net increase in Spain’s self-employed workforce.

Foreign autónomos up by 33 per cent

Between July 2022 and July this year, the number of foreign nationals registered with the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA) rose from 399,890 to 532,356. That represents a 33.1 per cent increase in four years. Over the same period, the number of Spanish autónomos went in the opposite direction, falling from 2,937,956 to 2,930,326, a decline of 0.3 per cent. Overall, the RETA gained 124,836 members, rising from 3,337,846 in July 2022 to 3,462,682 four years later.

Without the increase among foreign workers, Spain would actually have fewer self-employed people than it did in 2022. UPTA president Eduardo Abad said the figures show that foreign workers are not simply replacing existing economic activity. Instead, he said, they are helping to create and maintain it, including businesses at risk of disappearing because there is nobody available to take them over.

Who is starting businesses in Spain?

The figures also show where much of this foreign self-employed activity is coming from. Chinese nationals make up the largest group, with 71,242 autónomos registered in Spain. They are followed by Romanians with 55,051, Italians with 44,358, Moroccans with 34,919 and British nationals with 26,416. The next largest groups include 24,000 Colombians, 20,628 Germans, 19,484 Venezuelans, 17,066 Ukrainians, 17,043 French nationals and 16,341 Russians. Some of the strongest growth since 2022 has come from other nationalities.

Colombia recorded an increase of 13,269 autónomos, reaching around 24,000, while Ukraine added 11,358. The number of Russian self-employed workers also increased by 11,277. Foreign self-employed workers now represent 15.4 per cent of the entire Spanish autónomo workforce, compared with around 12 per cent four years ago.

Four regions dominate the figures

The growth is not evenly distributed across Spain. Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Madrid and Andalucía account for almost seven in every ten foreign autónomos, with Barcelona and Madrid recording the largest concentrations. The businesses being run by foreign self-employed workers are also spread across more sectors than the traditional image of immigrant entrepreneurship might suggest. Commerce, hospitality and construction remain important, but UPTA says foreign autónomos are increasingly working in professional services, transport, property and telecommunications.

That matters for Spain’s smaller towns and ageing business communities, where finding someone to take over an established business can be difficult. UPTA is calling for foreign entrepreneurship to become a permanent part of policies designed to tackle generational replacement, with easier administrative procedures and improved access to finance, particularly for small businesses, hospitality and rural enterprises.

Crackdown on ‘false autónomos’

Spain is also stepping up its crackdown on “falsos autónomos”, workers registered as self-employed who are actually working as employees. Unlike a genuine autónomo, they may have a fixed schedule, work under a boss’s instructions and depend on a single company for their income, while being made to cover their own Social Security contributions.

The arrangement can leave workers without employment rights such as paid holidays, unemployment protection, minimum wage guarantees and compensation when their employment ends. The Labour Inspectorate has identified false self-employment as an area for increased scrutiny.

More inspections planned

Under Spain’s 2025–2027 Labour and Social Security Inspection Plan, authorities are using data from Social Security and the Tax Agency to identify companies that may be wrongly classifying employees as self-employed. The issue is particularly significant in sectors such as delivery services, where UPTA said in January of this year that around 50,000 false autónomos were being regularised.

The crackdown means the rise in self-employed workers is not simply about counting registrations: authorities are also checking whether those registrations represent genuine independent businesses. The latest figures leave Spain with a clear shift in its self-employed workforce: while the number of Spanish autónomos has edged down, foreign workers have added enough new businesses and self-employed activity to push the overall total higher. For anyone watching the future of Spain’s small businesses, that 132,466 increase is not a side story. It is what has prevented the country’s autónomo numbers from going backwards.