Why isn’t Spain good at Entrepreneurship?

Spanish history and culture don’t teach the philosophy of success by hard work and risk-taking

Entrepreneurship is right now trend in European countries such as Spain where the unemployment rate hits record some 27 percent of workforce. It makes sense, right? Everybody who doesn’t have work wants to be entrepreneur and our government is trying to create an ideal environment to make it possible. Well, it’s never too late. Nevertheless, there is a misconception of the term “entrepreneur” in our culture. After all, this is pretty new for us.

There are no doubts that if companies can’t hire as much as they used to do it, people need to create their own jobs in order to overcome the deep downturn that we are suffering. In fact, there are 3 million of people living in severe poverty in Spain. But we are not entrepreneurs by heart. We want to be because there is no other option. Right here is where the problem starts. People tend to think this way:

I’m going to create my business and to make a lot of money with a simply good idea. Sooner than late my employees will work for me on developing my multimillion idea and I’ll be able to become rich meantime I’m lying on the beach drinking a cool sangria with friends. Not such an effort is required.

It sounds familiar to you? Probably not, this mentality is only typical from Spain and a few countries more. Do you remember our old slogan “Spain is different”? It couldn’t be more accurate. Yes, we are different and not for good things precisely. I’m not going to pick on my own country but honestly we have a lot to improve and to do that many things have to change. Starting from education and ending by renewing entirely our political class. The level of corruption is a shame, really.

Having said that, I wanted to focus on entrepreneurship because it’s not an ideal world, at least becoming an entrepreneur in Spain is tricky. First of all, ideas are overvalued. You may have an idea but if you don’t start working on it, you have nothing. It seems obvious but it’s not for everyone. For me, in order to transform an idea into a great business there must necessarily be two key factors: action and passion. Again, here is where Spanish people don’t succeed, in other words, we fail from the beginning although we have a lot of talent.

First, we don’t take action because often require risk. We are risk averse. We go to places we already know. We are used to earn money without taking risks but this is not possible anymore. It’s a cultural custom and really tough to change. It has written a lot about this but what is holding us back from taking risk is the fear to fail. In Spain, failure means almost the end of your career, perhaps the closest moment to your death. We are terrified.

Brave entrepreneurs are the only ones who know that failure means getting valuable knowledge for moving forward.

If you start up a company and end up into a failure you are pointed out for the rest of your life and even worse you will be criticized for your friends and family. There is no moral support. In short, if you take risk then you are alone in your journey. To tell the truth this has started to change but it still happens more than it should.

The second factor I listed was passion. This term means everything. We are passionate about partying, shopping, travelling and playing with the latest gadgets. However, we are not passionate about working, and of course, we are not passionate about spending 8 or 10 hours in an office developing a project that can improve people’s lives. It’s a pity. We love living a good and comfortable life as everybody does but the philosophy of success by hard work doesn’t exist. We are a simplistic society, we don’t like having to face complex problems, we don’t think in a long term. Basically, we dedicate time and passion in leisure activities, not in productive and challenging projects.

For the Spanish, a job is something that you don’t need to enjoy, but something that pays the bill that you endure between 9 and 5.

I hope you don’t take this article in the wrong way. My goal is not to give a bad publicity at all. I wanted to uncover the main cultural issues that are well known and accepted for the majority of Spanish people. I truly believe that it’s positive to make it public because only being aware of our weaknesses will be possible to start facing them.

Overall, entrepreneurship should be much more actively promoted in the Spanish educational system so that young Spaniards can develop vital skills such as independence, self-confidence and decision-making in situations of risk. Business schools are not enough, students should learn notions of business at primary school.

In addition to this and surely through the process of teaching, we have to make an effort to change our mentality. Starting from scratch. We need to be more willing to fail, support entrepreneurs, encourage them to make their dreams come true and above all start thinking big. Everything is possible if we believe in it.

I want to be proud of a new thriving and entrepreneurial Spain. Now it’s the time.