If you follow us regularly, you will know that we usually review the quarterly reports published periodically by the CNMC on the state of eCommerce in Spain. It is, without a doubt, the most complete and reliable benchmark source we have on the sector’s performance, and since it recently published the final 2025 results, we decided to take an in-depth look at the historical series for the past decade.
InSpain, the quarterly reports published periodically by the CNMC on the state of eCommerce are, without a doubt, the most complete and reliable benchmark source we have on the sector’s performance. Since it recently published the final 2025 results, we decided to take an in-depth look at the historical series for the past decade.
And we came across quite a few surprises.
Back then, eCommerce looked very different from what it is today, so this is going to be a very interesting trip back in time. Hop in the DeLorean, we are off.
Table of contents:
Let us start with the headline figures for Spanish eCommerce.
2015 was a key year in the sector’s evolution: it was the first time the 20 billion euro mark was surpassed. As you can see in the chart, eCommerce revenue in Spain multiplied by 5.7 between 2015 and 2025, rising from €20.013 billion to €114.812 billion. That represents a remarkable cumulative increase of 473.7%, at a compound average annual growth rate of 19.1%.
Of course, this period had its faster- and slower-growth phases, and overall it is clear that the pandemic (2020–2022) disrupted the time series, although in a less intuitive way than you might assume at first. So, despite the undeniable boost experienced by some verticals during the lockdown months, the arrival of the pandemic slowed total revenue instead of sending it soaring: in 2020 it grew by only 5.8%, well below the pace of more than 20% recorded between 2016 and 2019.
The reason? Well, as we will see, and as happens with the Spanish economy more broadly, for better or worse, Spanish eCommerce is heavily shaped by the tourism sector and… of course, tourism was not exactly thriving that year:
Other verticals such as fashion, grocery, department stores, electronics, and audiovisual subscriptions did grow, of course, but that only helped offset the decline in tourism and prevented the overall market from shrinking versus the previous year. It was actually during the post-pandemic rebound (2022) that eCommerce took off: a significant group of consumers had built up a strong desire to get out of the house, along with money not spent on travel for more than a year.
After growing 5.8% in 2020 and 11.7% in 2021, total online revenue in Spain surged by 25.4% in 2022, surpassing €72 billion.
All right, we now have a clear picture of how revenue evolved in Spanish eCommerce, but… how did it perform in terms of transaction volume?
Even better 😉
eCommerce-related transactions multiplied by 6.9 in Spain during the period, rising from just 297.4 million transactions in 2015 to 2.0515 billion in 2025. That represents cumulative growth of 589.9%. On average, revenue grew at an annual rate of 19.1%, while transactions expanded at 21.3%.
By sector, in 2015 transactions were heavily shaped by direct marketing (9.34%), fashion (7.59%), and records, books, newspapers, and stationery (7.20%). As for tourism, travel agencies (4.92%), ground passenger transport (4.91%), and air transport (4.72%) already held considerable weight.
By 2025, however, that mix had changed substantially, with gambling and betting leading the ranking (8.93%), ahead of ground passenger transport (7.04%) and restaurants (6.58%). The most representative shifts are:
Overall, the ranking has shifted toward activities characterized by higher frequency of use and lower-value transactions, such as restaurants, transportation, betting, and certain everyday services.
If we use the number of transactions and compare it with total annual revenue to calculate a kind of “average ticket” (although “average transaction value” would be a better term), we see that it has been edging downward, with a few small exceptions. Overall, it fell from €67.30 in 2015 to €55.96 in 2025 (-16.8%). The lowest point came in 2021, when the average ticket stood at €48.61.
It is not easy to identify every tourism-related item among the vast number of categories that make up CNMC data. The aggregate figure for tourism-related activities is probably even higher, for example if you include the tourism-related portion of road passenger transport, but the truth is that by looking at “travel agencies,” “air transport,” and “hotels and accommodations,” we find that tourism-linked activities have recovered much of the ground lost during the pandemic.
Ten years ago, their weight was much greater, probably because the relative importance of other Spanish eCommerce activities was less developed.
In 2015, travel agencies, air transport, and accommodations together generated €6.562 billion, equivalent to 32.79% of Spanish eCommerce. After falling to represent just 11.15% of online revenue in 2020, those three sectors accounted for 20.03% of Spanish eCommerce in 2025, with combined revenue of more than €23 billion.
But tourism is not the only thing keeping Spanish eCommerce afloat. Leaving aside the catch-all “Other” category, the verticals that moved the most money in 2025 were:
All right, but we are talking about evolution. Has this top ranking changed much compared with what was happening in 2015? Not really, as you can see in the following list.
The biggest names to disappear since then are the “direct marketing” and “home appliances” categories, which have lost ground to online grocery and alllll the procedures related to public administration. The top 3, meanwhile, remains unchanged, although it has lost a great deal of importance. Those three positions went from representing 36% of the total to just 18%.
If we focus on the change between 2024 and 2025, we see that the categories contributing the most additional revenue versus 2024 were:
These ten activities account for approximately 62.7% of total growth in 2025. As you can see, the acceleration in eCommerce revenue in Spain has been broad-based, without depending exclusively on a single category.
One thing that has basically remained stable since 2015 is the effect of seasonality on the annual balance. Although it would be logical to think that the “Black Friday-Cyber Monday-Christmas” combo would make the fourth quarter overwhelmingly dominant… the reality is that tourism, once again, plays a decisive role.
Taking into account the tourism weight of periods such as Easter (normally in the second quarter) and the summer vacation season (mostly in the third), the average annual distribution is fairly balanced:
Obviously, the fourth quarter leads, but only by a couple of points over the third, for example. As we were saying, this situation has been surprisingly stable throughout the 2015–2025 period. In 2015, for example, the fourth quarter accounted for 26.53% compared with 22.26% for the first.
The biggest gap opened, unsurprisingly, during the pandemic. In 2021, the fourth quarter represented 29.29% of the total, compared with 21.6% in the first quarter. Meanwhile, in 2020, Q1 reached its historical high at 23.69%, because it still included much of the activity before restrictions were imposed. That year, Q2 fell to 23.26%, its lowest share in the entire series.
One constant, year after year and quarter after quarter, is that foreign trade dominates the revenue figures we have been discussing. For example, in 2025, the last year for which we have complete data, revenue was distributed as follows:
In other words, domestic commerce, Spaniards buying from Spanish online stores, does not even account for one-third of the total. Most revenue comes from purchases made from Spain at stores based abroad, while 13.2% corresponds to purchases made from abroad at Spanish stores. As you can see, it is quite an unbalanced situation.
In fact, if we look at the largest segment, transactions from Spain with foreign merchants, we see that they have grown at an average annual rate of 22.5% since 2015.
However, there are reasons for, let us say, hope. The most striking 2025 figure lies precisely in the growth of revenue generated by Spanish merchants within Spain:
The domestic market is strengthening, and that is good news for every member of the eCommerce ecosystem.
As you can see, there are areas in which Spanish eCommerce has changed a great deal over these ten years, while in others it has remained strikingly stable. If you would like us to look up any additional figures, let us know in the comments and we will try to find them. And more broadly, if you want to learn more about the names that built this sector, remember that we have this wonderful 😉 history of eCommerce available for you to explore.
Image: ChatGPT
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