The growth of economic activity in Catalonia in 2021 (5.8%) was higher than that of Madrid (5.4%) after the drop in GDP in the previous year due to covid was more intense in the Catalan community, according to data published by the INE. Even so, Madrid leads the ranking of Spain as the region with the highest GDP (everything that is produced in a year).
The director of the studies service of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Joan Ramon Rovira, explains that in 2021 "Catalonia grew more than Madrid due to tourism". It was the sector that performed best in the year of recovery, because it was also the activity that suffered the most as mobility was totally or partially restricted by the pandemic.
Precisely the two most touristic communities in Spain headed the ranking: Illes Balears, which grew by 10.7%, and Canarias, which grew by 7.0%. The Foral Community of Navarra (5.9%) was the third most dynamic. The region with the lowest GDP variation rates was the autonomous community of Castilla y León (4.3%).
The Madrid community (with the aforementioned 5.4%), despite growing slightly below the Spanish average (5.5%), has become the locomotive of the Spanish economy since 2017, after in the previous decades it was always Catalonia that held that position. The GDP of Catalonia is 229,418 million, while that of Madrid is 5,200 million euros higher. In this way, the GDP of Madrid represents 19.49% of all of Spain, while that of Catalonia represents only 19.01%.
The leap that Madrid has made is spectacular in just two decades. In the year 2000, 17.7% of all Spain was produced in Madrid, while in Catalonia it was 18.9%. Two decades later, Catalonia has won only one tenth and Madrid almost two points, mainly to the detriment of the rest of the communities. Last week, BBVA Research estimated that Madrid will continue to grow more than Catalonia in the 2022-2024 period, according to forecasts published by BBVA Research in its Regional Observatory.
Where Catalonia has not held up so well to Madrid's push is in GDP per inhabitant. Rovira maintains that this indicator is the one that best shows the health of the economy. In the year 2000, GDP per inhabitant was 21.7% higher than the Spanish average, while in 2021 it fell to 17.4%. In the case of Madrid, on the other hand, it is the other way around, since it went from standing at 33.8% in 2000 to 36.6% in 2021.
Households in the Basque Country were those that, on average, had the highest disposable income per capita in 2021, with 20,479 euros (a figure 29.5% higher than that of Spain). On the other hand, the Canary Islands presented the lowest gross disposable income, with 12,410 euros per inhabitant (21.5% lower than the national average). That of Catalonia was 17,723 euros.
