About the Basque Country

Web Page of the Basque Government

The Basque Country, with the largest industrial concentration in Spain and home to around 10% of total national industrial activity, has the highest level of disposable income per inhabitant in the country, around 25% above the national average.

Our people, steeped in 300 years of industrial culture, are at the heart of a region offering highly favourable conditions for industrial development, with skilled professionals trained in some of the most prestigious institutions of learning in the country. The geographical location and modern communication infrastructure of the region ensure the quick and efficient movement of both people and goods, whilst R&D&i and new technology related activities are fully supported by a wide range of institutions.

Certain key areas of Basque industry, such as the aerospace sector, the automotive sector, the machine-tool sector and the electronics and telecommunication sector, are highly active in the export market, with exports accounting for 90%, 65%, 60% and 35% of turnover respectively. Basque Country companies have a clear international focus, with production plants and/or strategic partnerships established in many countries throughout the world.

TRAINING, INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE

The Basque Country has four prestigious universities, with some 91,000 students and 4,000 lecturers. Our strong industrial tradition has given rise to a high quality of vocational training, an educational area of greater importance in the Basque Country compared with average figures for the rest of Spain and Europe. Furthermore, figures on continuous training through established courses of 20+ hours reveal a total of around 60,000 hours per year, including almost 1,300 management programmes. 43% of these training hours are focused on management skills, languages and information technology.

Over the last eight years, a series of innovative initiatives in the field of learning and collaboration between organisations have been developed, involving around 400 companies, consultancies, business schools, universities, Public Administration and other entities, and around 7,000 people in 29 work forums and information exchange networking events.

The Basque Country also has an established network of support services for the industrial sectors. The drivers of this network are the various Basque Country cluster associations, providing key support for over 1,000 member companies in terms of promotion, incentives and intermediary activities, all of which goes towards establishing an efficient system of industrial development based on inter-company collaboration and cooperation, a trademark of the Basque industrial fabric.

INNOVATION

The efforts made in the field of R&D, especially with respect to the actions and commitment of the business sector and their relative influence in quality terms on taking the region forward, give a clear idea of the capacity for innovation of any given region or country, and therefore of their competitive position in the market. In this sense, over the last 22 years, investment in R&D activities in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country has multiplied 22-fold, representing around 1.48% of GDP in 2003, a figure considerably above the average in Spain (1.10%).

In this respect, an especially important effort has been made in the business sector which, with 0.98% of GDP compared to the average GDP figure of 0.53% in Spain, has contributed to total expenditure on R&D in the Basque Country. In general, performance indicators in the Basque Country are above the Spanish average and on a par with, or in some cases better than EU average values: such results are, to a large extent, attributable to the significance of the industrial sector in the Basque Country, and to our high awareness level in terms of the importance and need for technological innovation.