The Spanish energy market has broken into two halves that seem to have no relationship with each other. On the one hand, the trench of the retail market—direct sales to consumers—has become a scenario of continuous attrition where historical giants are bleeding customers at an unprecedented rate. On the other hand, the boardrooms of these same corporations celebrate the highest profits in their entire history.
How is it possible to make more money than ever by losing hundreds of thousands of customers? The answer defines the new paradigm of the sector: large electricity companies are ceasing to be “light sellers” to consolidate themselves as managers of colossal infrastructures. The real business is no longer in fighting the average citizen’s monthly bill, but in controlling the cables, regulated assets and energy demanded by the new technological giants.
The bleeding of the 1.3 million contracts. The closing figures for 2025 draw a historic leak. As detailed The IndependentIberdrola and Endesa suffered an “unprecedented fall”, jointly losing almost 1.3 million customers (1,279 million exactly) in the electricity and gas markets. Endesa left 645,000 contracts behind, while Iberdrola lost 634,000.
The attitude of companies towards this flight of users is radically different. The president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, downplayed to the matter during the presentation of results, calling it “normal rotation” and boasting of the “enormous loyalty” of its hard core of users. On the other side of the coin, Endesa yes it has set off the alarms: has announced an injection of 900 million euros until 2028 with the urgent objective of recovering half a million customers, even relying on strategic alliances such as the recent purchase of Masorange’s energy business.
The feast of alternative firms. In the last year, an absolute mobility record was broken, more than 7.25 million changes of marketer. In other words, almost one in four Spaniards decided to change their rate. The big winners of this stampede have been companies like Octopus Energy, the MásMóvil group and, most especially, Repsol. The oil company has already established itself as the fourth electricity operator in the country, exceeding 2.1 million customers and taking market share directly from traditional electricity companies.
The model breaks, but the box is full. Any traditional economics textbook would say that losing more than a million customers is a financial catastrophe. However, the balance sheets say the opposite. How to publish Five DaysIberdrola pulverized its brands by earning 6,285 million euros in 2025 (12% more than the previous year), while Endesa reached 2,351 million (18% more).
The secret of this paradox explains it perfectly The Mail When analyzing Iberdrola’s accounts: the net benefits that come from the management of distribution networks skyrocketed by a brutal 77%, while the contribution of the energy generation business fell by 27%. In simple words, they earn less by selling electricity to the end customer, but they earn much more by charging the regulated “toll” for using their cables, especially in markets with very attractive legislation such as the United States and the United Kingdom, which already account for 60% of their investments.
The future runs through the cables. Electricity companies are going to stop obsessing about installing solar panels at any price to focus on the sockets and transmission highways. Endesa will invest a record figure of 10.6 billion until 2028, allocating more than half (52%) exclusively to electricity networks.
Simultaneously, it will put the brakes on renewable energy, cutting its investment by 20% due to the “cannibalization” (plunging prices) that solar energy suffers during peak production hours. Iberdrola follows the same path: 62% of its gigantic investments last year went to the networks.
The other great vector: data centers. Endesa already has some 3,000 MW of capacity ready to feed these insatiable technological infrastructures, highlighting its hybrid macroproject in Pego (Portugal). All of this will require a much more robust national backbone; Therefore, Redeia (parent company of Red Eléctrica) will skyrocket your investments 70%, injecting 6,000 million into the high-voltage transmission network to support this technological boom and the electrification of the country.
Furthermore, this scenario comes with strong pressure of both companies for extending the useful life of Spanish nuclear plants, such as Almaraz, defending that they can operate safely up to 80 years to guarantee cheap and stable base energy that the system urgently needs.
Network saturation and market clearing. The regulatory context explains many of these operational decisions. Spain faces a monumental bureaucratic funnel: 83.4% of electricity distribution nodes They are administratively saturatedwhich keeps 130 GW of renewable energy locked in, even though the grid is physically underutilized. To avoid the collapse of reindustrialization, the CNMC is designing new “flexible access permits” that will change the rules of the game.
At the same time, the bottom of the market pyramid is undergoing a silent purge. The Government started a few months ago a historic cleanup of the “ghost marketers.” Of the more than 900 firms registered in Spain, only 416 had real activity. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition has already begun to disable inactive or delinquent companies, transferring their clients to avoid systemic risks and clean up a hypertrophied market.
The definitive metamorphosis. The traditional electricity bill is no longer the main battlefield for the great energy totems. While they gladly cede – or out of pure wear and tear – the exhausting hand-to-hand combat of the retail market to independent marketers and oil companies in the midst of a green conversion, Iberdrola and Endesa have ascended to a much safer, more profitable and macroscopic ecosystem. They have understood that the future does not belong to whoever sells electricity to the final consumer, but to whoever owns the highways on which, inevitably, all that energy will have to circulate.
Image | freepik and Alex Quezada
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