OutdoorAdvertising.es — Rethinking outdoor advertising in Spain
Data

Outdoor advertising in Spain: the numbers

Every fact has one source. Our own calculations are graded Solid, Indicative or Estimate. Free to cite with credit to OutdoorAdvertising.es.

OutdoorAdvertising.es Research · Updated November 2026

Citable facts

Spending figures come from InfoAdex, an independent monitor whose results are published by the outdoor industry's own federation; they are the standard reference in Spain. Tourism and population figures come from official statistics offices.

The market

  1. Spain's outdoor advertising market was worth €460.5 million in 2025, up 6.7% on the year before. InfoAdex, via La FEDE
  2. €192.1 million of that, about 42%, went on digital screens. InfoAdex, via La FEDE
  3. Outdoor is still only about 7% of Spain's measured advertising spend. InfoAdex, via La FEDE
  4. Outdoor spend was €292.5 million in January–August 2026, up 5% on the same period of 2025. PuroMarketing

Who controls it

  1. In 2022, JCDecaux and Clear Channel together accounted for 86% of Spain's street-furniture advertising (such as bus shelters), and held every such contract in cities of over 500,000 people, according to figures examined by the competition authority. The two companies' proposed merger was withdrawn in 2024. CNMC, case C/1426/23, table 8 and para. 116
  2. The same authority found no new national outdoor advertising company had entered the market in ten years. CNMC
  3. Barcelona's 2025 advertising contracts are worth about €28 million a year to the city: €24 million from the street-furniture contract (against a €13.5 million minimum) and €3.7 million from the kiosk contract. Reason Why
  4. Aena is offering all advertising in Spain's airports as a single ten-year contract worth over €1 billion, replacing eight separate contracts. Aena
  5. In smaller places, the big contracts can attract nobody: Zaragoza's 2018 street advertising tender received no bids. Reason Why

Tourists and audiences

  1. Spain received 96.77 million international tourists in 2025. INE
  2. On 6 August 2025, 2.06 million people were in the Balearic Islands, about 1.6 times the resident population. Majorca Daily Bulletin, citing Ibestat
  3. Formentera's summer population is nearly three times its winter population. ARA Balears, citing Ibestat
  4. Spain's main media audience study counts residents aged 14 and over living in private homes, 43.2 million people. Tourists are not part of it. AIMC

Safety and environment

  1. The largest review of research on roadside advertising, covering 90 studies, found that adverts draw drivers' eyes but did not establish a direct link to crashes. Oviedo-Trespalacios et al., 2019
  2. Swedish eye-tracking research found digital billboards hold drivers' gaze longer than ordinary ones. Dukic et al., via ScienceDaily
  3. France's environment agency estimates a 2 m² digital advertising screen uses about 2,049 kWh a year, similar to a household's electricity use excluding heating. CB News / AFP

Abroad

  1. When São Paulo banned almost all outdoor advertising in 2006, including on vehicles, only about 10% of advertising companies survived, and the large contract holders that remained now defend the ban. Meio & Mensagem
  2. In Britain, an advert on a vehicle needs no permission if the vehicle is normally used for moving rather than for displaying adverts. UK legislation

Spain's own national rules

  1. Spain's 2025 road regulation already uses a behaviour test for parked vehicles: a van or trailer counts as advertising if it is parked for long periods where it can be seen from a main road, or parked again and again in different places. Real Decreto 899/2025, art. 103.4, BOE

Original figures from OutdoorAdvertising.es

Our own calculations from the public data above. One line on method for each. Each is graded: Solid (direct from official counts), Indicative (different countries or sources measured differently) or Estimate (relies on an assumption, not an observed figure).

  1. [Indicative] Spain spends about €9 per person a year on outdoor advertising, against roughly €24 in the UK and €19 in France. Method: national outdoor spend divided by population (INE, ONS); UK converted at £1 = €1.17. Countries measure spend slightly differently, so treat this as a direction, not an exact ranking.
  2. [Solid] Palma airport handles about five times more passengers in August than in January, but Mallorca's population rises by less than half. Method: Aena monthly passengers vs Ibestat population present. Arrivals are not the same as audience.
  3. [Solid] The Canary Islands receive more foreign tourists in December than in August, the reverse of the rest of Spain. Method: INE monthly arrivals by region, December vs August 2025.
  4. [Estimate] Nationally, foreign tourists add only about 3–5% to the number of people in Spain on an average day. Method: annual arrivals × an assumed stay of 5–9 nights ÷ 365 ÷ population. The stay length is assumed, so this is an estimate, not a measured figure. The point it supports, that the effect is local not national, holds across any reasonable stay length.
  5. [Solid, limited sample] In the ordinances we reviewed from 25 Spanish municipalities, none mentioned advertising bicycles. Method: review of published municipal advertising rules, October 2026. Not a survey of all of Spain.