| When I told people I was writing a story about how pharmaceutical companies were moving to Barcelona, I’ll admit some were a little incredulous. Spain isn’t exactly the first country that pops into your head when you say “life sciences superpower.” When venture capital fund Ysios Capital first opened its doors in 2008 there were no specialized VCs investing in Spain and biotech companies “had no international exposure,” says partner Raul Martin-Ruiz. Now, in the case of the Spanish companies in Ysios’ portfolio, international investors have contributed four times more money than Ysios has. To Martin-Ruiz, it’s an indicator that Spanish biotechs are finally on the map. Spain has a unique value proposition to entice would-be investors. The typical incentives are there, such as generous tax breaks, but the labor costs for highly specialized staff in Spain are also lower than many other European countries. Add in a relatively speedy regulatory process and it’s not hard to see why Spain is now at the top of European rankings for clinical trials.
There’s also something else – the government is doing all it can to make doing business in Spain as easy as possible. AstraZeneca’s Spain President Rick R. Suarez told me that when the British drugmaker picked Barcelona for a new research hub, the government helped with everything from connecting it with startups to assisting new employees to access housing and healthcare. That burgeoning biotech hub in Barcelona also drew Miquel Vila-Perello back to his home country from Princeton University when he was debating where to set up a biotech now called SpliceBio. “I wanted to be part of that,” he says. Now, more than 10 years later, the bet has paid off, with Spain positioning itself as the clear hub in Europe for biotech, he says. Still, there are challenges. While Spain itself might be a leader in clinical trials, gene therapy company SpliceBio needs to carry out these studies in multiple European countries – a complex and expensive process compared with the one-stop shop that is the US. It’s meant that a significant part of SpliceBio’s early-stage trials will be done in America.
Spain faces fierce competition for Big Pharma’s dollars, not least from China and the US, where President Donald Trump is threatening big taxes on companies that are not manufacturing products in the US.
Hitting the beach and relaxing isn’t an option for Spain if it wants to build on its growing dominance in European life sciences. — Ashleigh Furlong | 
