The shooting of international films generates an average of 7,000 jobs per year in Spain. In addition, between 2019 and 2022, they have generated an expenditure of more than 1,320 million euros in the country’s economy. The data was revealed by the first study carried out on the economic impact of these recordings, entitled Invisible visible. The impact that doesn’t appear on screen. The document was prepared by the consultancy Olsberg SPI and was presented this Sunday at the San Sebastian Film Festival. It is a project of the Spanish Film Commission that had the collaboration of PROFILM.
The analysis, in turn, is part of the Spain Audiovisual Hub initiative, launched in 2021 by the government, whose objective is to increase audiovisual production levels in Spain by 30% by 2025. Public promotion of investments in the sector has been carried out in the form of tax deductions for foreign productions; and the indicators that have been evaluated are job creation and contribution to gross added value (GVA).
Since 2015, Spain has offered a specific tax incentive for international productions shot in the country, which offers a 30% deduction on the first million euros invested in eligible expenses and 25% on additional expenses. The maximum ceiling is 20 million euros per production for feature films and 10 million euros per episode for series.
In the Canary Islands, due to their special tax regime, the incentive is higher, offering a 50% deduction on the first million euros (54% from 2024) and 45% for additional expenses, with a limit of 36 million euros per production and 18 million euros per episode of a television series.
The study gathers information on the 165 international productions that benefited from tax incentives in Spain between 2019 and 2022; which generated a total expenditure of more than 1.320 million euros and a minimum estimated at almost 1.8 million euros of GVA contributions to the national economy. The analysis shows that a substantial part of the investments is allocated to non-specific sectors of the audiovisual sector.
In addition, it is estimated that international works created an average of 7,080 full-time jobs in Spain per year between 2019 and 2022. Of these, around 1,300 were directly generated by the productions and the remaining 5,780 came from indirect or induced impacts. According to the study, the total cumulative remuneration of these employees amounted to 989.9 million euros.
Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia, the biggest beneficiaries
The analysis shows that the territorial impact of the productions studied reaches practically the entire country. A significant part of the expenditure is concentrated in four communities, three of them (Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia) being the most populated in the country. The Canary Islands have joined them thanks, according to the document, to “a more favourable incentive regime”.
