Spain

Sunset in the City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain by O Palsson with CC

Spain occu­pies over 80% of the land on the Iber­ian Penin­sula with over 46.7 mil­lion peo­ple spread across approx­i­mately 505,000 km². In 2012 the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket size in Spain was about US $22 bil­lion, with an OTC-to-Rx ratio of 11:89. The OTC sec­tor itself was worth US $2.15 bil­lion in 2012.

In Spain med­ica­tions require co-pays, with patients con­tribut­ing 40% to the med­i­cine price and pen­sion­ers exempt from out-of-pocket pay­ment. The value-added tax for med­i­cine in Spain is 4%.

There are around 21,166 far­mácias in Spain, with one phar­macy for every 2,200 inhab­i­tants. This is lower than the EU aver­age of 3,200 inhab­i­tants per phar­macy. How­ever, the Span­ish phar­macy sys­tem is highly reg­u­lated, with no branch phar­ma­cies and, because mul­ti­ple own­er­ship is pro­hib­ited, no phar­macy chains.

With an aver­age growth rate of 2.3%, the OTC sec­tor in Spain is expected to reach US $2.32 bil­lion by 2018. Beyond these sta­tis­tics, the mar­ket­place also offers space for the intro­duc­tion of new prod­ucts.