Spain's endless wave of collective redundancies: 2,099 days and counting

ERE after ERE: two thousand days of layoffs in Spain

How many collective redundancy plans (EREs, Spain's formal redundancy procedures) can fit into 2,099 days? Judging by what has accumulated since 2021, the answer is: so many that nobody is surprised anymore. What began as an avalanche of cuts in tourism at the height of the pandemic — with international tourist arrivals down 77.3% in 2020 to just 19 million visitors — has turned into a permanent trickle running through the car industry, banking, retail, private healthcare and even NGOs. The result is a country where collective redundancy is no longer a traumatic exception but a routine management tool.

The pattern is not one sector or one quarter. It is a pattern. And when the pattern lasts six years, the question stops being cyclical and becomes structural.

From pandemic tourism to industry in 2026

The first blow was tourism. Logitravel, Tui and NH were negotiating redundancies while SEPI (the Spanish state holding company) piled up rescue requests. Marina d'Or filed an ERE claiming losses of 100 million and affecting 7% of its permanent workforce, 77 workers. The sector that underpins much of Spain's GDP went into survival mode and companies, so the story went, were «fighting to hold out until summer».

Some held out. Others did not. And as tourism began to recover, industry took over the baton. Ford Almussafes went from furlough scheme to furlough scheme, ending 2025 without producing a single car for 81 days, while Stellantis cut its output in Italy by 40% and Mecaner, a plant owned by the French group, faced an ERE for 148 employees with the central and Basque governments dodging responsibility.

The diagnosis gaining ground among those who trinc the sector is that this is no accident but a plan: the pogre dismantling of capacity in Spain and its relocation to other countries. Car production fell by almost 10% and the parts suppliers — Akwel Vigo with 100 redundancies, Mahle with 740 in Spain, Marelli, Adient — fell like dominoes. The «activity valley» the companies talked about has, it has been noted, become a plateau.

Banks and tech firms are cutting jobs too

The cuts did not stop at the factories. Ibercaja filled almost 90% of the 750 redundancies in its ERE with volunteers: 651 employees signed up across Spain. Santander peine negotiations at its tech subsidiaries. Ericsson Spain announced collective redundancies and Avatel proposed an ERE for 444 workers, 33.5% of its staff. Microsoft Ibérica agreed with the unions on the departure of nearly 5% of its workforce.

The logic is the same as in industry: leaner structures, efficiency, competitiveness. The difference is that here redundancy is presented as a technical adjustment and rarely generates the political noise of a factory closure. As has been pointed out more than once, when the layoffs are white-collar, neither the media nor the politicians cry foul.

The Spanish Red Cross case: three EREs in two years

One case sums up the absurdity of the cycle. Cruz Roja Española (the Spanish Red Cross) launched its third ERE in less than two years in October 2025, after the previous two were annulled by the National Court, affecting 118 workers across the country. The humanitarian organisation, which receives public money and runs social programmes, was carrying out collective redundancies while the official narrative spoke of a robust economy.

The detail is not trivial: the very institution that denounces other people's precarity was applying the same mechanisms it criticises. The NGO sector, it has been noted, hires through temporary work agencies and resorts to redundancies in dribs and drabs when membership targets are missed.

The rocket narrative and the queue of headlines

The contrast between rhetoric and data is the backbone of much of the analysis. While the government celebrated Spain as «Europe's locomotive» for its GDP growth, the queue of redundancy plans kept growing: Mediapro was preparing an ERE for more than 1,000 people, Duro Felguera announced it would halve its 500-strong workforce on the brink of collapse, Unilabs affected some 300 workers, Alcampo restructured with 2,400 employees in limbo and Sal Costa left Barcelona after more than half a century.

The argument heard most often is that unemployment figures are propped up by statistical make-up and that EREs grew by 12% through October, with more than 2,800 companies in the Valencia region requesting force majeure furlough schemes after the floods. The destruction of small businesses — an average of 192 closures a day in June 2025, according to UPTA — completes the picture.

Wages that don't rise and a bill that does

Behind every ERE there is a problem of margins and costs. The most repeated complaint is that wages have been stagnant for decades while the shopping basket has doubled since 2019: a family of four that used to spend 300 euros a month on food now spends 500 or 600, on wages stuck at 1,200 or 1,300 euros at best. The 21% VAT on basic products and markups do the rest.

The result is a labour market squeezing people out from both ends: small shops close, factories empty out and administrative staff are cut. And in between, a furlough system that, critics say, suits companies and governments alike because it is paid for by workers still in jobs while boards of directors avoid the cost of definitive redundancies.

What will happen to jobs in Spain in 2026?

The picture the available data paints is of a restructuring that is not over. The European car crisis, with electrification postponed and output falling, will keep dragging down the parts suppliers. Tourism, which seemed saved, now faces its own adjustments. And the service sector, which accounts for seven out of ten redundancies, has begun laying people off as casually as industry does.

Given this outlook, the question is no longer when the wave will stop. It is how many more redundancy plans it will take for someone to admit that this is not a bump in the road but a change of model. And in the meantime, every morning brings a new ERE. What a coincidence.