Does this make the Canaries Spain's poorest region?

No. On GDP per resident they rank 15th of 17 autonomous communities, with Extremadura and Andalusia behind them. And the measure captures output per resident, not poverty, income or purchasing power.

How can the index fall while the economy grows?

Because it is a fraction. Canary output rose 39.6 per cent in real terms between 2000 and 2024, but the population rose 34.8 per cent — and Spain grew faster in the numerator and more slowly in the denominator.

How is this different from wages and income?

GDP per resident spreads all value added across every resident, children and pensioners included, and does not ask who receives it. The INE reports average compensation per employee in 2024 of 35,818 euros in the Canaries against 40,514 euros in Spain.

When do the 2025 figures arrive?

The advance GDP estimate on Wednesday 30 September 2026, the full accounts in December 2026. Both dates are in the INE's calendar.

Where do I find the raw data?

In INEbase, as the workbook pr_cre.xlsx. This statistic cannot be retrieved through the INE's Tempus interface.

CANARY ISLANDS · ECONOMY

GDP per head at 79.3 per cent: why the Canaries have lost 14.6 points since 2000

Canary gross domestic product per resident reached 79.25 per cent of the Spanish average in 2024: 25,861 euros against 32,633. In 2000 the figure was 93.84 per cent — the gap has widened by 14.6 index points. The numbers come from the INE's regional accounts, published on 16 December 2025. The finding is unambiguous; the obvious reading is not. The index has risen for four years running, and in 2024 no Spanish region grew faster than the Canaries except Murcia.

27 September 2026 · By Martin Kosinski · 5 min. · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief

The port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (illustrative)

Photo: Ivanhercaz, CC BY-SA 4.0 (illustrative image).

The figures and where they come from

GDP per resident 2024: 25,861 euros, index Spain=100 at 79.25; Spain 32,633 euros. INE, Contabilidad Regional de España, Revisión Estadística 2024, Table 2, published 16 December 2025.
Rank 15 of 17 autonomous communities. Only Extremadura (25,224 euros) and Andalusia (24,542) sit below. Ceuta (23,070) and Melilla (21,118) are lower still, but they are autonomous cities and are listed separately.
Total GDP 2024: 58.145 billion euros — 58,144,618 thousand euros in the INE's own unit — or 3.65 per cent of Spanish GDP of 1.59 trillion euros. Table 1.
Real growth 2024: +4.42 per cent, narrowly behind Murcia (+4.44). The INE rounds both to 4.4 and names them jointly as the fastest-growing communities. Table 3.
Population at 1 July 2024: 2,248,400, up 34.8 per cent on 2000; Spain up 20.5 per cent. Table 4; the workbook counts in thousands of persons.
Status: 2024 is an advance estimate (A, Avance), 2023 provisional (P, Provisional). Both will be revised.

What this number measures — and what it does not

GDP per resident is a division: all the economic output of a territory divided by the number of people registered as living there. It is not income, not wages, and not what a household has left. Whoever produces the output need not live here; whoever receives the profits need not be resident. In a tourism economy with many residents and many owners outside the archipelago, the measure can come out low without describing the whole situation. The caveat cuts both ways: it is also no proof that the Canaries are better off than it shows. It says how much output falls to each resident — not how that output is distributed.

Four years of rises: 72.28 was the floor

The series is not a steady decline. The index fell from 93.84 in 2000 almost without interruption to 79.47 in 2019, and then to 72.28 in the pandemic year 2020 — Spain's second-sharpest real contraction at minus 18.76 per cent, with only the Balearics losing more. It has risen every year since: 72.89 for 2021, 77.24 for 2022, 78.31 for 2023 and 79.25 for 2024. Four consecutive rises, and in euros GDP per head of 25,861 is well above the 21,159 of 2019. What is missing is the distance to the national average: Spain grew as well, which is why the index is still below its pre-crisis level.

The denominator: 581,000 more residents

Most of the shortfall arises below the line. Table 4 puts the Canary population at around 1,667,400 on 1 July 2000 and 2,248,400 in 2024 — 581,000 more, or 34.8 per cent. Spain grew by 20.5 per cent over the same period, from 40.55 to 48.86 million. A fraction whose denominator grows faster falls even when the numerator rises. A calculation by this newsroom separates the two effects: decomposing the relative shortfall in logarithms, roughly 71 per cent is down to the faster population growth and roughly 29 per cent to slower growth in output. That is a decomposition, not an explanation of causes.

But the numerator is short too

Population does not explain everything. The volume changes in Table 3 allow cumulative real growth from 2000 to 2024 to be worked out; this newsroom chained the 24 annual rates. The result: Canaries plus 39.6 per cent, Spain plus 46.1 per cent, Madrid plus 69.9 per cent. The archipelago did grow in real terms, but more slowly than the country. Accordingly the Canary share of Spanish GDP fell from 3.86 per cent to 3.65 per cent, while its share of the population rose from 4.11 to 4.60 per cent. One figure from the same release fits the picture: Canary investment grew by an average of 0.6 per cent a year between 2019 and 2023, against 5.1 per cent nationally — the second-lowest rate after La Rioja.

The next number lands on Wednesday

On Wednesday 30 September 2026 the INE publishes the advance estimate of regional GDP for 2025, updating the whole 2000 to 2025 series; the full version, with employment, pay and investment, follows in December. Both dates are in the INE's publication calendar, which gives no time of day. The one number to watch: whether the Canary index rises above 80 for the first time since 2018. It stood at 80.36 in 2018, 79.47 in 2019 and 79.25 in 2024. Whether it happens is open — the advance also revises earlier years, and the population at 1 July 2025 enters the fraction just as output does. This newsroom makes no forecast.

How to check the figures yourself: The regional accounts are not available through the INE's Tempus interface, only as a file in INEbase: the workbook pr_cre.xlsx at ine.es/daco/daco42/cre00/b2024/. Table 2 holds GDP per resident and the Spain=100 index, Table 1 GDP in thousands of euros, Table 3 the real volume changes, Table 4 the population at 1 July.

Three traps: First, 2024 is only an advance estimate and 2023 provisional — both still move, as Murcia shows, whose figure was cut by a tenth of a point against the September estimate. Second, GDP per resident is measured at current prices, so it contains inflation, and the INE's footnote states that the extra-regio GDP is not distributed across the territories. Third, there are no provincial figures for 2024: for Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife the per-resident series ends in 2023, at 24,395 and 24,105 euros.

FAQ

Does this make the Canaries Spain's poorest region?: No. On GDP per resident they rank 15th of 17 autonomous communities, with Extremadura and Andalusia behind them. And the measure captures output per resident, not poverty, income or purchasing power.
How can the index fall while the economy grows?: Because it is a fraction. Canary output rose 39.6 per cent in real terms between 2000 and 2024, but the population rose 34.8 per cent — and Spain grew faster in the numerator and more slowly in the denominator.
How is this different from wages and income?: GDP per resident spreads all value added across every resident, children and pensioners included, and does not ask who receives it. The INE reports average compensation per employee in 2024 of 35,818 euros in the Canaries against 40,514 euros in Spain.
When do the 2025 figures arrive?: The advance GDP estimate on Wednesday 30 September 2026, the full accounts in December 2026. Both dates are in the INE's calendar.
Where do I find the raw data?: In INEbase, as the workbook pr_cre.xlsx. This statistic cannot be retrieved through the INE's Tempus interface.

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