Spain’s Mom and Pops Are Hurting

Spain’s robust economic recovery hasn’t buoyed Ricardo Sainz’s half-century-old grocery store in Madrid’s working-class neighborhood of Orcasitas. Sales have fallen from roughly €25,000 a month ($27,000) before the recession began in 2008 to €10,000 today. And he expects them to keep slipping. His faithful older clients are dying, and younger generations prefer the nearby chain supermarket. All his employees have left, and he isn’t replacing them. The shopkeeper works by himself, 11 hours a day, six days a week. “The recovery is helping some,” he says. “But not businesses of my size. The system doesn’t support us.”

Revenue at small and midsize companies in Spain dropped 32 percent from 2007 to 2014, and their head count was down 27 percent on average, according to an IESE Business School study of 1.2 million businesses of various sizes published in November. Sales were steady at their larger counterparts, which increased their workforces by 7 percent.