The innovative pharmaceutical industry aims to be a strategic partner to the next government in making Spain a European leader in health, innovation, and growth.

The pharmaceutical industry is a strategic sector—the only one with a national strategy developed in collaboration with five government ministries. It is an essential sector and a driver of innovation, competitiveness, and high-quality employment, capable of delivering benefits to society that extend beyond health to encompass social and economic gains.

The call for early elections comes at a pivotal moment for the sector’s future. The legislative process for key reforms—such as the draft Medicines Act and other regulations—is now on hold. For this reason, and looking beyond any potential regulatory initiatives by the incoming government, the innovative pharmaceutical industry is proposing ten strategic lines of action aimed at transforming Spain into a major international biopharmaceutical hub—one capable of strengthening public health while boosting the economy, knowledge, and the country’s strategic autonomy.

1. A Value- and Sustainability-Oriented National Health System (NHS)
   • The industry will serve as a strategic partner for an NHS that integrates health and innovation; strengthens prevention and treatment adherence; measures health value; coordinates actions with the autonomous regions; and advances new payment models, while driving precision medicine and public-private collaboration. It envisions a system that leverages health policies to maximize the health, social, and economic impact of innovation.
2. Boosting Public Investment and Facilitating Rapid, Equitable Access to Innovative Medicines.
   • The innovative pharmaceutical industry proposes working with the incoming government to accelerate the incorporation of innovative medicines into the NHS in a rapid and equitable manner. Key to this effort is increasing public investment in innovative medicines and ensuring adherence to funding timelines, early access, price confidentiality, reliable supply, and dispensing processes that are faster and closer to the patient.
3. Enhancing Financial and Fiscal Competitiveness in R&D and Manufacturing
   • To make Spain an attractive hub for innovation, the industry requires fiscal incentives comparable to or better than those in the rest of the EU, along with new financial instruments for clinical trials and scaling-up biotech companies. Support is also needed for manufacturing infrastructure, venture capital, skilled talent, and intellectual property.
4. Strengthening Manufacturing and Strategic Autonomy
   • While the innovative pharmaceutical industry possesses a solid industrial base, measures are needed to bolster the resilience of the industrial ecosystem. It is crucial for the incoming government to strengthen strategic autonomy by protecting critical medicines and activating strategic medicine reserves, as well as by implementing public procurement policies based on resilience.
5. The PROFARMA Program: A Lever for Attracting Investment
   • A strategic industry requires a more stable and predictable PROFARMA program—one that increases incentives, recognizes strategic projects, links classification to drug pricing and funding, offers flexible scoring pathways, and uses that classification as a lever to reduce administrative hurdles.
6. Consolidating Leadership in Clinical Research
   • Spain is already a European leader and a global benchmark in clinical trials. The incoming government must help consolidate this leadership through greater administrative efficiency, strengthened early-phase research, the promotion of decentralization and collaborative networking, the fostering of primary care research, and active patient participation—ensuring greater diversity among the populations included in clinical trials.
7. Building a Leading European Digital Scientific Ecosystem
   • To ensure Spain fully harnesses the potential of health data and artificial intelligence, the innovative pharmaceutical industry proposes collaborating with the government, leveraging the European Health Data Space. The industry is already working—and will continue to work—alongside public authorities and the broader healthcare and technology ecosystem to position Spain as a leader in real-world evidence, digital biomedical hubs, and regulatory sandboxes.
8. Boosting Talent and Technology Transfer
   • Spain produces excellent science but needs to improve its capacity to transform that science into new medicines, innovative companies, and economic growth. The industry proposes a joint agenda to the incoming government to attract and develop talent, strengthen technology transfer, boost scientific entrepreneurship, and support biotech companies at every stage of growth. This aims to foster an ecosystem capable of both competing and collaborating with leading international innovation hubs. The industry already has strategies in place—such as the Farma-Biotech Program and other preclinical and translational research projects—designed to transform scientific knowledge into innovation and economic growth.
9. Promoting environmental and social sustainability and good governance
   • The transition to a more sustainable economy offers an opportunity to strengthen Spain’s leadership in pharmaceutical innovation and production. The industry proposes working with the incoming government to advance decarbonization, the circular economy, and good governance. This entails ensuring that environmental policies foster proportionate regulations that preserve competitiveness, production capacity, and strategic autonomy, alongside initiatives to drive inclusion, diversity, and responsible governance within the sector.
10. Streamlining and simplifying administrative processes
    • The innovative pharmaceutical industry proposes collaborating with the incoming government to establish an administrative framework that eliminates bureaucratic barriers by reducing administrative burdens and leveraging AI. This framework should mirror the approach of the EU’s “Omnibus” packages, expand the use of single points of contact and “one-stop shops,” apply the “once-only” principle for data submission, and standardize the use of electronic documentation and signatures.
    • Collectively, these 10 measures aim to accelerate patient access to innovation, boost pharmaceutical research and production, attract new investment, create highly skilled jobs, and strengthen collaboration among the healthcare system, the scientific community, and the business sector. To achieve this, the industry considers it essential to maintain a coordinated international promotion strategy, forge alliances with global hubs, engage in active biopharmaceutical diplomacy, participate institutionally in national and global forums, and establish strategic agreements with biopharmaceutical ecosystems.

The innovative pharmaceutical industry seeks to be a strategic partner to the next government in order to turn this opportunity into reality and make Spain a European leader in health, innovation, and growth.