Startup Failures in Spain

Barcelona's EV charging champion on the NYSE. The going concern warning arrived three years after the IPO.

Barcelona DTC florist raised 75M EUR and was named Spain best startup in its sector — entered insolvency in 2024 and sold to a creditor for 1M EUR, a 98% value destruction

Spanish e-scooter startup acquired by Getir as a market entry strategy. When Getir exited Spain, Blok's operations vanished with it.

The beautiful form builder — hit the PLG ceiling when Google Forms remained free.

Customized itself into a corner — and couldn't escape without Sabadell.

Spain's SSI identity pioneer absorbed before self-sovereign ideas could scale.

Valencia on-demand laundry startup announced a 90M EUR round that never closed — then stopped paying 157 employees for 9 months before filing bankruptcy in 2023

Spain's top online sports shop overordered in the pandemic boom and drowned in debt.

Survived a Ticketmaster breach scandal only to be destroyed by ChatGPT's shadow.

The delivery app that built its model on gig workers. Spain's Ley Rider said no.

15,000 scooters parked forever — when tourism mobility hits a regulatory wall.

Open banking pioneer that banked on pilots but never closed the real deals.

Turned Figma designs into apps — but couldn't turn community love into enterprise revenue.

IPO'd at €180M on green energy. The energy crisis turned their model inside-out.

Brilliant drought prediction, terrible unit economics in Europe's most fragmented farm market.

WhatsApp insurance was fun until every Spanish millennial only bought the cheapest plan.

Russian-backed quick commerce that burned through $165M to prove European grocery delivery in 15 minutes doesn't work.

4 million couples, 25 countries, and one pandemic that broke the entire international wedding dream.

Spain's first real estate crowdfunding platform — shut by the regulator that once approved it

Spain's pet-sitting champion that COVID-19 destroyed in 72 hours.

The classifieds app that raised 500M USD from Naspers and OLX. Then Naspers merged it with OLX.

The Barcelona election technology company raised €130M to digitize voting worldwide — then COVID-19 cancelled all elections globally in 2020 and the company filed bankruptcy.

Spain's travel SaaS for corporate bookings — killed by the pandemic that destroyed its entire market

Making public data beautiful, but not profitable.

Spain's top C2C fashion app — until Vinted made commissions extinct

The Spanish insurance wallet startup. Ran out before reaching scale.

Spain deep tech: CSIC IP co-ownership blocked EU/US VC, CDTI/EIC insufficient for scale, German/Nordic VCs required EU holding entity, and IP law reform incomplete until 2023

Spain's self-publishing platform. Amazon KDP launched in Spanish and ended it.

SAP consulting. Overcommitted. Restructured.

Spain's Facebook with 15 million users. Telefónica bought it. Then destroyed it.

Spain's flash-sale pioneer. Acquired and absorbed by Veepee.

Spain leading food delivery marketplace was acquired by Rocket Internet for 80M EUR — which then discovered growth was built on unsustainable discounts, not organic demand

CaixaBank + Santander + Telefonica created a joint venture fintech with 27M EUR — then killed it in 2016 because it threatened their core businesses. Revenue in 2014: 2444 EUR.

A web-based buy and sell platform with mobile and social network integration allowing users to trade goods and digital content.

Spain's green hydrogen startup that arrived at the party before the drinks were ready

Spain's largest luxury flash sales acquired by Amazon for $80M — Amazon shut it after 5 years because flash sales conflicted with Amazon's everyday-low-price brand positioning

A web-based buy and sell platform for users to trade goods and digitally created content.

The Spanish fintech that pivoted from near-death to a Nasdaq IPO.

Spain's classifieds search engine. Acquired by Japan. Dismantled.

Spanish digital insurance startup blocked by broker channel incumbents and Mapfre's digital push

Lookiero raised €32M to be the Stitch Fix of Southern Europe — then discovered that European fashion subscription economics are even harder than American ones

CARTO raised 88 million dollars to become the leading cloud-native spatial analytics platform for enterprises — and cut 30 percent of its workforce in 2022 as BigQuery, Snowflake, and Databricks absorbed spatial analytics natively and reduced its addressable market.

BQ built Spain most successful consumer electronics brand — smartphones, tablets, 3D printers, ebooks — and was gutted in 2020 when Xiaomi and Huawei made its price points commercially unviable, cutting 500 of its 600 employees.

Spanish sustainable last-mile delivery startup backed by UPS and Tiger Global that raised 180 million euros and entered zombie mode as unit economics failed to converge.

Spanish beauty subscription box drained by retention churn and international competitor marketing budgets

Spain's leading restaurant reservation platform acquired by TheFork (TripAdvisor) and retired in favor of the global brand.

Spanish challenger bank raised EUR 30M and became the first Spanish neobank, then sold to Aplazame below its fundraise.

Spanish retail computer vision platform commoditized by cloud AI APIs from AWS and Google

Spanish group buying platform that rode the Groupon wave to $32M raised, then slowly died as the entire daily deals category collapsed.

Spain's contract AI platform that US players localized faster than it could differentiate

Spanish neobank for freelancers and the self-employed — Revolut arrived and made it irrelevant

Barcelona mobile publisher monetization platform serving 1,500+ media companies, absorbed by Equativ ad-tech.

Barcelona electric scooter sharing startup grounded by municipal permit battles

Spanish online course marketplace acqui-hired before Coursera finished conquering Europe

Housfy promised Spanish homeowners they could sell their properties without paying traditional real estate agent commissions — and shut down in 2023 after failing to reach the transaction volume needed to sustain its flat-fee model.

Spain's wifi company reached €1.5B market cap on the Madrid AIM market — then the CEO admitted revenues were 90% fabricated after a short seller published a research report

Barcelona blue-collar job app raised $15M and was acquired by Adecco, which dismantled it within a year.

Madrid pricing intelligence SaaS for retail absorbed into Contentsquare, losing its independent identity.

Spanish mobile gaming studio ran out of runway after first hit game revenue faded

Curated short-break experiences in Spain — COVID erased the whole concept overnight

Spanish embedded finance platform raised €8M but could not achieve enterprise client traction

OnTruck raised EUR 72M from Index Ventures and Partech to digitize Spanish trucking — and sold to a state-owned postal subsidiary for a fraction of that in 2021 after failing to crack the fragmented freight market.

Spanish corporate catering platform that could not survive the arrival of Deliveroo and Uber Eats in the workplace meals segment.

The Spanish BNPL pioneer backed by BNP Paribas that built buy-now-pay-later across Spain, France and Italy before its corporate parent abandoned the venture

Spanish SME cybersecurity startup acqui-hired after failing to differentiate from global giants

On-demand printing marketplace squeezed out by Vistaprint and local chains

The Madrid coliving and room rental platform that raised 5 million euros serving young professionals and students and closed when it could not scale beyond a niche market

Spain's pioneering secondhand children's clothing marketplace raised €10M then quietly shut down as Vinted took the European market.

The mid-term rental platform backed by Kleiner Perkins that COVID turned into a ghost company

Barcelona sustainable furniture startup raised EUR 14M and shut down in 2023 unable to solve artisan furniture unit economics at scale.

Spain's hyperlocal grocery platform crushed between Glovo and Getir

Barcelona's AI dental diagnostics startup couldn't penetrate Spain's fragmented dental clinic market

Spain's wedding marketplace that couldn't monetize the happiest day of your life

Spain's hybrid real estate disruptor undone by Idealista's dominance

The Spanish personal finance app that raised 37 million euros and was made irrelevant when banks built their own

Spain's leading flash-sales and travel deals site was acquired by Groupon then quietly shut down as the category died.

Spain's wine-tech startup that discovered 500-year-old bodegas don't buy software

Spanish proptech challenger outmuscled by Idealista and Fotocasa

Barcelona grocery delivery startup squeezed out by Amazon Fresh and well-funded rivals.

Madrid co-living proptech that collapsed almost instantly when COVID-19 lockdowns emptied shared housing.

AI legal document generator blocked by Spanish bar association restrictions

Spain's daily-deals pioneer faded into obscurity as Groupon and market saturation killed the category.

Spain's P2P lending pioneer wound down by EU regulation it helped lobby against

Spanish event ticketing platform acquired by Eventbrite in 2018 and quietly wound down a year later.

Spanish P2P payments app acquired by Square then quietly killed

Barcelona expense management SaaS for SMEs acquired by Emburse, absorbed into a global platform and retired.

Barcelona surprise travel startup sold mystery weekend trips and was building scale when COVID shut the travel market overnight.

Spanish on-demand staffing marketplace that reached unicorn status connecting blue-collar workers to gig shifts but could not sustain unit economics at scale.

Barcelona video streaming pioneer acquired by Rakuten, rebranded into oblivion as Rakuten TV, losing its identity.

The premium online supermarket that couldn't scale its model

Barcelona social casino gaming startup with 30M users, absorbed by Playtika and stripped of its independent identity.

Spanish vacation rental metasearch engine acquired by Holidu and absorbed into its European holiday home platform.

Spanish food delivery marketplace burned through capital fighting Glovo and Uber Eats

The Spanish life insurance comparison that forgot Spain doesn't compare life insurance online

Spain's electric scooter startup run over by Lime with a $750M war chest

Mexico City proptech startup raised $20M to modernize apartment rentals and shut when the 2022 funding freeze made its next raise impossible.

The rare disease biotech that couldn't cross the valley of death

Spanish home-care marketplace that underestimated the trust gap in elderly care

Spain's SME cybersecurity startup undercut by the global giants it helped validate

Spanish fashion social network that peaked early and slowly faded as Pinterest and Instagram made it redundant.

Spanish BNPL pioneer acquired by WiZink that was quietly shut down as the acquirer shifted strategy.

Barcelona startup pioneering micro-stay hotel bookings by the hour, devastated by COVID-19.

Romanian proptech helping Eastern Europeans buy abroad ran out of runway in the rate hike era

Spain's home improvement marketplace acquired by Houzz and wound down after a decade.

The Spanish room rental app that attracted Airbnb investment and then shed 60 percent of its team

Better UX than Idealista, but Idealista had the listings

Spain's programmatic platform that Google and Meta turned into a rounding error

Spain's circular economy platform that EU regulation handed to SAP and Microsoft