The same business, two nervous systems
When someone asks me «where is it easier to run a business, in Italy or in Spain?», I usually answer with a worse question: easier for what?
Because the business — selling, installing, collecting, servicing — is the same. The cable is the same. The customer who wants to cut their bill is the same. What isn't the same is the administrative nervous system wrapped around every decision. And that nervous system decides, more than your technical talent, how much time you have left to do the real work.
I've lived both. I've invoiced in both. I've lost sleep in both. And in 2026 I still cross the mental border every week: a quote in Alicante, a claim in Sicily, a supplier invoicing from northern Italy, a client who wants to pay in 90 days «because that's how it's done here».
Italy: the Superbonus, the hangover, and the art of getting paid
Italy taught me solar marketing the hard way. The Superbonus 110% was a brutal accelerator: people weren't buying panels, they were buying fiscal certainty. While it lasted, the market was a river. When it ended, the river dried up and only the people who knew how to sell without doping the customer with subsidies were left standing.
But Italy also taught me something else, more mundane and harder: getting paid.
In Italy, a payment term isn't an accounting detail. It's a cultural negotiation. Sixty days, ninety days, «end of the month after next», invoices that travel by email and then by WhatsApp and then by a call from a lawyer who isn't a lawyer yet because they're still «looking into it». Italian VAT, withholdings, settlements, the eternal game between what you've done and what you've been paid — that's not abstract bureaucracy. It's cash flow. And when cash flow fails, it eats your team, your stock and your sleep.
Italy is a country where you can execute a flawless installation in ten days… and spend three months chasing the payment. That asymmetry — technical speed versus financial slowness — is one of the things that wears down anyone arriving from abroad thinking «Europe is Europe».
Spain: the grid operator as a state religion
Spain, by contrast, often lets you invoice more cleanly. The private customer usually pays sooner. VAT is more predictable. The bank, when it works, works. So far, so good.
Spain's problem has another name: the grid operator.
In Spain I've seen technical projects solved in two weeks then sit parked for months waiting for a connection point, a line reinforcement, a certificate, a permit, a scheduling slot that doesn't exist, an email nobody answers, a file that's «under review». The physics of the sun doesn't wait. Neither does the battery. But the paperwork does wait — and it charges a toll in the form of a nervous client, a stalled job and evaporated margin.
Italy kills you on collection. Spain kills you on permits. Two different ways of losing the same time.
Hiring: two countries, two mazes
Building a team in Italy and building one in Spain are not the same sport.
In Spain, social security, contracts, payslips and labour jargon have a density that scares anyone arriving from abroad — and rightly so. Hiring badly is expensive. Hiring well is also expensive, but at least it's predictable. The problem isn't so much the cost as the cognitive friction: every registration, every deregistration, every change, every mental mini-crisis triggered by an incomplete form.
In Italy, the maze is different: contract types, welfare funds, contributions, regions that interpret rules differently, and a culture where «we'll sort it out later» is sometimes the unwritten norm. The result for the founder is the same: hours you don't bill, spent making sure nothing breaks legally.
If you've truly founded something — not as a consultant billing hours, but as someone paying other people's rent — you know every administrative hour is an hour you're not on site, not with a premium client, and not closing the next project.
The Italian client and the Spanish client
Here there really are differences in character, and it's worth saying so without romanticising them.
The Italian client, in my experience, argues more over price, dramatises the process more and, once they trust you, becomes a fierce ambassador. The Spanish client argues less at first, expects more «for someone to just handle it», and when they get angry, they get angry in silence — or with a three-line email that weighs more than a shout.
Neither is better. Both are buying the same thing: peace of mind. What changes is the emotional language they use to ask for it. In Italy you sometimes have to explain the arithmetic with theatre. In Spain you sometimes have to explain it with administrative patience: «this isn't up to me, it's up to the grid operator» — a phrase that should be banned and yet is the most frequent truth in the sector.
What doesn't change: the sun and the people who work
What is identical in both countries is this: good people.
The electrician who arrives early. The sales rep who answers on Saturday. The technician who doesn't invent a problem to sell a part. The client who calls to say thank you when the bill actually drops. Those exist in Bari and in Elche. They exist in Milan and in Murcia. And they are exactly the value that numbers don't measure — the same value I wrote about when I talked about Pedro and my sales rep.
Bureaucracy is national. Human excellence is local and portable.
So, where do you operate?
My honest answer in 2026: you operate wherever you can execute.
If your bottleneck is getting paid, Italy will educate you the hard way. If your bottleneck is connecting to the grid, Spain will educate you the hard way. If your bottleneck is finding people you can trust, neither country gives you anything for free: you have to build a team, keep it, and not let the finance department — or your own exhaustion — tell you those people «cost too much».
I don't choose a country by flag. I choose by capacity to deliver. And when paperwork gets in the way, I do what I've already described elsewhere: I design the technical solution so the client doesn't depend on a permit that might never arrive. Battery, hybrid, peak shaving, partial autonomy. Not because it's «green». Because it's operational sovereignty.
The border lesson
Italy and Spain aren't two markets. They're two different frictions around the same market. Anyone who believes «Europe unifies» hasn't tried opening a bank account, hiring someone, connecting a meter or collecting an invoice on both sides of the Mediterranean in the same quarter.
The European Union unifies the rhetoric. The ground is still fragmented by national, regional and sector-specific bureaucracy — the kind that drains your health in teaspoons, as I already wrote about cookies and banks.
Same business. Two bureaucracies. One remedy: good people, fast execution, and as little dependence as possible on whoever isn't in a hurry.
If you operate on both sides — or are about to — don't look for the «easy» country. Look for the bottleneck you're willing to live with. Because you'll have one. Always.