Telefónica has set 119 final departures in Movistar Plus+part of the ERE that will eliminate 4,554 positions in Spain. It is a reduction compared to the more than 200 losses initially planned, but it comes at the worst moment: when the platform was finally adding clients again.
Why is it important. Movistar Plus+ has 3.75 million (the most recent data is from September 30) , the best data since 2018 after years of collapse. It lost almost 650,000 clients between 2019 and 2023, hit rock bottom, and was already beginning to recover. Now Telefónica is cutting muscle just when it needed to step on the accelerator.
The paradox. The company bet a lot of money buying Canal+ and launching its own productions to compete with Netflix and Prime Video. When the numbers improve, he reduces the workforce. The inevitable question: how are you going to keep up with global giants with fewer people and a tighter budget?
Yes, but. Subscriber growth does not guarantee profitability. Telefónica has reoriented Movistar Plus+ towards a more flexible and cheaper offer, unrelated to convergent packages. That adds customers but compresses margins. And competing in streaming without a global scale is very expensive.
The unequal context. Netflix already has more than 300 million subscribers in the world. Prime Video exceeds 200 million. Disney+ around 120 million. Movistar Plus+ has 3.75 million in Spain, at the end of the third quarter of 2025. The difference in scale is brutal and translates directly into budget for content, technology and distribution.
What works. Football continues to be the lifeline. LaLiga and the Champions League keep many subscribers hooked who, without that content, perhaps would not have stayed for so long. But a platform cannot be built only on sports rights that also increase in price every cycle, as we saw a few days ago.
What deserves more luck. Movistar Plus+’s own series and documentaries have objective quality. ‘Poison‘, ‘The Messiah‘, ‘The Plague‘, ‘riot police‘, ‘The Pioneer‘ either ‘Rapa‘ demonstrate the ability to find powerful stories with local cultural sensitivity. Netflix and Prime also produce Spanish content, but Movistar Plus+ has built its own catalog that transcends obvious trends and connects with the public in another way.
The problem is not the quality of the content. Quality is sometimes not enough when you compete against infinite budgets and recommendation algorithms fine-tuned with data from hundreds of millions of users.
The big question. What will become of Movistar Plus+ if it continues to contract? It was beginning to regain ground, but doing so with 119 fewer people makes it difficult to maintain the pace. Without the investment capacity to match the Netflix-Amazon-Disney triumvirate, the room for maneuver narrows every quarter.
The background. This ERE is not an isolated case. Telefónica has been thinning its workforce for years while it pivots towards infrastructure and gets rid of unprofitable Latin American subsidiaries. Marc Murtra, president for one year, has renovated its entire dome. The 2024 one cost 1,300 million and took 3,421 positions. This new adjustment will be more expensive and deeper.
Between the lines. The unions have ended up accepting forced dismissals in minority companies such as Movistar Plus+, despite having set it as an initial red line.
The pressure from the workforce to guarantee early retirements in other subsidiaries has weighed more than maintaining positions. UGT and CCOO have appealed to “common sense” and “responsibility”common euphemisms to justify a capitulation.
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Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio
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