The combined wealth of Spain’s 33 billionaires, five more than in 2024, reached €197.5 billion in 2025, representing a real increase of 13.6% over the previous year, while the more than 3,000 billionaires worldwide saw their wealth increase by more than 16% to $18.3 trillion (€15.7 trillion), according to a report by Oxfam Intermón coinciding with the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, Switzerland.
In the case of Spain, the NGO considers that 2025 has been ‘a historic year’ for capital, as the combined wealth of the country’s 33 billionaires, as well as the market capitalisation of the Ibex 35 companies, reached a record level, while wages are losing weight in the economy and growing below the rate of increase in the cost of living.
‘In Spain, the concentration of wealth has also accelerated,’ say the authors of the report “Against the empire of the richest. Defending democracy against the power of billionaires”, after calculating that last year, the wealth of Spanish billionaires grew four times faster than the average for the last five years.
‘This means that Spanish billionaires earned an average of more than €77 million per day,’ they point out, adding that it would take nearly one million working people in Spain to earn the same amount.
According to the study, the Spanish billionaires’ “club” grew by five new members in 2025, to a total of 33, mostly men, with a combined wealth estimated at €197.5 billion, the highest level ever recorded, representing an increase of almost €28.3 billion compared to 2024, with real growth of 13.6%, more than four times the growth forecast for the Spanish economy in 2025 (2.9%). Thus, the combined wealth of Spain’s 33 billionaires would exceed that of 18.7 million Spaniards, 39% of the entire population.
In contrast to this growth in the wealth of billionaires, Oxfam Intermón points out that, in the first ten months of 2025, wages would have risen six points less than inflation in the same period, meaning that they would have suffered a loss of purchasing power. According to its estimates, ‘the richest 1% account for 23.9% of total wealth, while the poorest half account for just 6.7%’.
Thus, the richest 0.1% in Spain (some 48,000 people with an average wealth of €20 million) would have seen their share of national wealth increase since 2010 and would now account for more than 10% of the total. ‘People are not getting ahead. Economic dynamism favours large fortunes, but for millions of people it is becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet or heat their homes. Added to this harsh reality are the difficulties in accessing decent and affordable housing,’ says Franc Cortada, director of Oxfam Intermón.