The Catalan economy is slowing, but it is still growing faster than the Spanish economy.

BarcelonaIn the first quarter of this year, the Catalan economy maintained the high annual growth rate it has been recording since the end of the pandemic, despite experiencing a slowdown compared to the final months of 2024, according to data released this Thursday by Idescat, the statistical institute of the Generalitat (Catalan government). However, the annual growth rate once again exceeded the Spanish and European averages.

Thus, Catalonia's gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator that measures the size of an economy) closed 3.2% higher in the first three months of 2025 than in the same period a year earlier. These are, therefore, much higher figures than those of most European countries. For example, the average annual growth in the eurozone in the first quarter was 1.4%, with the major economies lagging behind: Germany recorded a drop of 0.2%, France grew by 0.8%, and Italy, by 0.6%.

Compared to Spain, Catalonia also comes out better in the year-on-year rates, since The State's GDP expanded by 2.8% in the first quarter, four tenths below the Catalan.

Quarterly braking

However, the good annual figures contrast with the slowdown recorded. compared to the previous quarter, the fourth quarter of 2024Between January and March of this year, the Catalan economy grew a modest 0.1%, which contrasts with the 0.9% recorded in the previous quarter and is lower than the figures recorded in the rest of Europe and Spain. The Spanish economy expanded 0.6% in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter, while the eurozone average was 0.4%.

The slowdown is mainly due to construction and services, which also expanded 0.1%, after closing the year with very high figures. This slowdown may have several reasons. The first is that the first quarter of the year is usually a month with lower household consumption and lower job creation, as it occurs just after the Christmas holidays, when there is an increase in extra spending that families must later compensate for. This slows activity in key sectors within the services industry, such as commerce, restaurants, and the leisure sector. Furthermore, the first quarter is the low tourist season, so the number of foreign visitors falls.

In this sense, a slowdown in these two elements should have a direct effect on GDP, since during the second half of last year, consumption and tourism were the two major drivers of the Catalan economy, along with business investment facilitated by the reduction in interest rates.

In contrast to services, despite having closed 2024 with a drop in activity, industry recovered during the first quarter of 2025 with an increase of 0.7% compared to the previous quarter, a notable figure, especially given the international context. Catalan industry is heavily dependent on exports, so the rise in activity occurs in an unfavorable context due to the trade war started in January by United States President Donald Trump. However, some analysts have pointed out that some companies have increased their sales during the first months of this year because customers preferred to increase stocks in the face of possible tariff increases in the US.

As for the primary sector, it grew by 0.6% quarter-on-quarter.

Despite the slowdown in the first few months of the year, the forecast is that the Catalan economy will maintain the strong performance of recent years. This week, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce lowered its forecast for Catalan GDP growth at 2.7% by 2025, which would have risen to 3% were it not for the negative effects of the tariff war initiated by Trump, which will have an impact of more than €1 billion on the Catalan export sector, according to the institution's estimates.

The data published by Idescat do not allow a more detailed breakdown of how GDP evolved by sector and branch of activity, as they are a provisional preview. Idescat will update the final expanded data on June 16.