The Spanish pig industry closed 2025 with a historical record and, a priori, that cannot be. Because, finally, we are talking about 5.27 million tons of meat just when the European pig has been in recession for four years. 6% year-on-year growth just as African swine fever reappears after 31 years of absence.
To give us an idea: Spain already invoices 24.2% of all pork in the EU and is the third world producer behind the US and China.
How is it possible?
The question is timely. After all, the sector is growing against the tide. Not only because of the plague, nor because of the conflicts between Europe and China; but because the collapse in prices and the general retreat would have advised taking a more conservative line.
However, the explanation is simpler than it seems: what is sold as an industrial success hides a history of extreme foreign dependence, health fragility and an environmental problem that the country refuses to solve.
But let’s go in parts. December 16, 2025, China increased its final tariffs on European pork from 4.9% to 19.8% for five years. It is true that Iberian ham and sausages were left out and that for many Spanish companies the average tariff was 9.8%, but the blow was forceful. Above all, because (although apparently all this was part of the electric car wars) the problem is structural: China imports less and less because it produces more and more.
To this we must add that a little earlier, on November 28, 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture had confirmed the first two positives for African swine fever in wild boars, unleashing a problem that made headlines for weeks (and has still not been resolved).
And from this storm that threatened to break everything, the only thing that has reached the consumer is that pork is the animal protein that has become the least expensive during 2025.
Because? Well, because the crisis has been metabolized, driving the concentration of the sector: today, the ten largest companies market today 65% of national meat (compared to 52% ten years ago). We have lost 32% of small farms; but the big ones have more and more power.
Something that also explains why the country is about to a very serious European sanction for not complying with the nitrates directive. In the end the question is not “how is it possible that the most efficient and best armored sector in Europe is simultaneously on the verge of a collapse of margins and with major water pollution problems?”; The point is that Spain produces more pigs than ever precisely for those reasons.
Image | Amber Kipp
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