The Spanish motor company calls on new manufacturers to remain the second European producer

The Spanish automobile already knows the crash plan that will guide its course until the end of the decade. The Auto 2030 Plan was presented last week with Pedro Sánchez as master of ceremonies and the ambitious objective of revaluing the gross added value of the sector to 120,000 million euros in ten years, compared to the current 85,000 million, with the arduous challenge of safeguarding employment and recovering the ground lost in production since the pandemic.

The document, detailed this Tuesday by Anfac – the employers’ association that has developed the plan with the help of the Government and the rest of the actors in the sector -, foresees a wave of public and private investments of 36,000 to 39,000 million euros mobilized in the next five years to accelerate the industrial transformation and electrification projected in the new plan. If its estimates are met, the sector would make a leap compared to the 29 billion invested in the last five years to place Spain in a position to aspire to 2.5 million electrified vehicles in 2035.

To this end – the employers’ association itself warns – it is not enough for Spain to modernize existing plants if it wants to maintain its status as the second largest European producer. “We need to attract new investments, whether from actors already established in Spain or from new ones. players who want to come to Europe and we have to give them the possibility of settling here and not in other foreign countries” commented the president of Anfac, Josep María Recasens, before the media. To achieve this ambition reflected in the continental commitment ‘Fit for 55’, the new plan must be developed in an environment of aid to OEMS to modernize their current plants, gain additional capacity by attracting part of the electric production of European manufacturers and attract disruptive players, mainly Chinese.

The call extends to the entire value chain and also applies to battery manufacturers, where the association estimates that Spain could capture up to 10 billion euros in gross value added linked to mining, refining, cell production, assembly and recycling. Of this amount, it should be noted, about half (4.7 billion) are reflected in projects already underway such as the PowerCo (Volkswagen) gigafactory in Valencia, Envision in Cáceres or CATL and Stellantis in Zaragoza.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” said Recasens before depicting how the automobile industry would devalue its gross added value to 78 billion, which would be 10% less than the economic contribution of the sector currently. This deterioration not only responds to the drop in production: it is also explained by the very nature of the electric car. “The electric vehicle, being less complex than the combustion vehicle, the one that manufactures the same number of units will need fewer people. If it wants to preserve employment and is not going to manufacture more cars, The only way is to open the value chain and seek employment in adjacent activities“has revealed.

Immediately after the manufacturers, it was the dealers, represented by Faconauto, who took up the baton to take stock of the year and present their expectations in light of the new plan. The employers’ association chaired by Marta Blázquez has estimated in a meeting with the media that registrations in 2026 can reach 1.3 million vehicles with a third of the market electrified if a prompt activation of the new plan is carried out. “2025 has shown us that when public policy is designed with rigor and executed with coherence, the market responds, and now we must take the next step: 2026 has to be the year in which Spain leaves behind recovery and embraces consolidation, with more electrification and a strong internal market,” said Blázquez.