Spain has an increasingly large lobby club, a sector that the Government now wants to urgently regulate. The Ibex 35 companies have their own teams to try to influence the decision-making of politicians and in recent years there have been around a dozen companies that are dedicated, mainly in Madrid, to trying to influence the laws for their clients, which are national and international companies. The winner is whoever has the best contact list in the ministries and Congress. The problem is that the activity does not have complete transparency, which makes the Spanish sector an anomaly in Europe. The first Council of Ministers of the course approved a royal decree-law that must be validated this month and that today does not have the necessary support.
Acento, Llorente y Cuenca, Harmon, Kreab or Rud Pedersen, among other lobbying companies, employ politicians who were ministers, secretaries of state, chiefs of staff or deputies. From the PSOE, PP, CiU, ERC, PNV, Sumar and even in one case, from Podemos. The companies have formed a dense network of signings in search of contacts and the possibility of influencing political decision-making. To these we must add the Ibex 35 and the business associations, with great activity. The lobby has not stopped growing in Spain in recent years. In 2025, the sector's income amounted to 315 million, double that of three years before.
The Government agreed with Brussels within the framework of European funds that Spain would have its own lobbying law. The Executive approved a bill in 2025 that is blocked in Congress and has legislated urgently, via royal decree-law. According to the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service, promoter of the standard, “we are late.” “The approval is not only taken due to the need to comply with milestone 432 of the Recovery Plan, but is due to the Government's decision to respond to a strong social and political demand,” argues the department led by Óscar López. "The current text meets the requirements demanded by the Commission, on the one hand, and, on the other, reflects the hard work carried out to integrate all the sensitivities of the parliamentary arc, as evidenced by the 19 transactional amendments already signed at the end of last year, plus many other individual amendments. In addition, the norm has a strong social consensus that demands the regulation of this type of relationship," he explains.
But companies have another vision. The epicenter of the controversy is the public, state and mandatory registry, which will depend on the Transparency Council, and where very precise information must be provided about the meetings with politicians: date, place, participants, summary of what was discussed and documents exchanged. Almost absolute transparency.
The actors affected by the law are trying to prevent it from being validated in Parliament. Several Ibex 35 companies expose their frontal opposition to La Vanguardia. The large listed companies would be among the large companies harmed by the rule. Energy, banking or telecommunications, largely regulated sectors, base part of their work on contacts with the Administration. For this reason, they believe that if the lobbying law ends up being approved as it has been configured, “any informal contact” with the ministries or parliamentarians is de facto disabled. “With this regulation, Koldos would multiply,” says one of these companies.
From another Ibex firm they point out that "the working groups between companies and the Administration are already paralyzed" for fear of the sanctioning regime, which contemplates sanctions of up to 40,000 euros and disqualifications of five years. One of the main lobbying companies adds that “the registry would paralyze the activity of the Department of Economic Affairs of La Moncloa, whose job is to meet with companies to learn about their concerns.”
The vote in Congress to validate the norm once again depends on Junts. Carles Puigdemont's party maintains a critical position with the fact that the Government has legislated urgently and has forgotten the amendments registered by the party two years ago. For example, he proposed specifying who the regulation is aimed at to differentiate professional lobbyists from organizations, associations and sectoral entities whose size and activity mean that they are not considered a lobby. The Executive has not incorporated these demands and, if nothing changes, the Catalan group is prepared to vote against. The lobbying law would have to wait for another opportunity.
From the 'Aena amendment' to the tax reform
The Government hopes that the royal decree-law that it has proposed will end up passing the parliamentary process because, they say, "it equates the Spanish lobby with Europe." The standard “consolidates and incorporates the main experiences and lessons learned from neighboring countries, such as Ireland, France, Slovenia or Lithuania,” says the Ministry. The ultimate objective of the law is, among other aspects, that citizens can know who is trying to influence decision-making. Thus, an interested person could have access to the usual meetings that Ibex companies and specialized firms hold with politicians. In recent years there have been several conversations that have ended in victory for lobbying companies. One of the most important was the one known as the 'Aena amendment', a legislative change that a well-known lobbying company introduced in a law to reduce the rent of airport premises due to the reduction in passengers that occurred during the pandemic. The initial hole for the listed company was more than 1,000 million euros. Along the same lines, several large companies tried to influence the fiscal package that the Government approved in December 2024 with mixed results. The banks failed to eliminate the tax on their profits.
