Public Spending and Where the Budget Goes

What does the State spend on, and how much does it cost per citizen?

Consolidated public spending in Spain reached €15,230 per inhabitant in 2024 (€725.0bn in total, 45.4% of GDP). Most of the budget goes to the functions of the welfare state: social protection and pensions, health and education account for 64.3% of all public spending.

A principle of this website: amounts are shown per inhabitant and adjusted for inflation, in 2025 euros using the INE's annual average CPI, so that figures from different years are comparable. Totals in current euros appear as secondary figures; percentages (of spending or of GDP) need no adjustment.

1. Annual Spending per Inhabitant in Spain (2024)

Dividing the spending on each function by Spain's ~48.9 million residents (annual average population) gives the average annual cost per inhabitant of each public service:

2. Spending Trends by Main Block

Spending per inhabitant in each block, in 2025 euros (adjusted for inflation), since 1996, the first year with annual CPI available:

3. Breakdown of the Main Spending Functions (2024)

• Social Protection and Pensions (41.0%): The public sector's largest outlay, covering contributory retirement, survivors' and disability pensions, as well as unemployment and long-term care benefits.
• Public Healthcare (14.2%): Managed mainly by the 17 Autonomous Communities to fund hospitals, health centres, medical staff and pharmaceutical spending.
• Education (9.1%): Funding for pre-primary, primary and secondary education, vocational training and public universities.
• Interest on Public Debt (5.5%): Regular interest payments to investors holding government bonds and obligations (COFOG GF0107, shown here separately from General Public Services), a financial cost that provides no direct service but constrains budgetary capacity.
• Economy, Transport and Infrastructure (11.2%): Investment in the rail network (AVE high-speed and Cercanías commuter lines), roads, airports, agriculture and the energy transition.
• Public Safety and Justice (4.0%): Upkeep of the security forces (National Police, Guardia Civil, regional police forces), courts and prisons.
• Defence (2.0%): Upkeep of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air and Space Force) and military modernisation programmes.

Official Sources

• COFOG Functional Classification of Expenditure (Eurostat gov_10a_exp): Consolidated general government spending by function under the standard classification of the United Nations and the European Union.
• GDP at current prices (Eurostat nama_10_gdp) and average population (nama_10_pe): Denominators for the percentages of GDP and spending per inhabitant.
• General State Budget (Ministry of Finance): Spending series for ministries and public bodies.