How good are pensions in Spain compared to the rest of Europe?
Foreign pensioners have long considered Spain an affordable place to retire to, but how good are Spanish pensions for those who’ve worked in Spain for much or all of their careers? Here’s what the available data says about how Spanish pensions stack up against others.
Spain has seen its pensions system improve but remains near the bottom of the pack and far behind Nordic and other neighbouring European countries in terms of post-retirement income, a new retirement index has found.
This comes as Spain stares down a demographic crisis in the future, with an increasingly ageing population and a welfare system dependant on migration to keep afloat.
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Spain improved its position on the Natixis Investment Managers Global Retirement Index 2026, placing in 33rd place out of 44 countries analysed, six places higher than the previous year and with a score of 56 per cent, eight points higher than in 2025.
That means Spain is no longer the lowest-ranked European Union country included in the index. That position is now held by Greece, which ranks 36th.
Behind Spain are also Latvia (34) and Finland (35), whilst Italy (26) and Portugal (30) ranked higher within southern Europe.
According to data from Spain’s Social Security Ministry, the average pension under the Social Security system in July 2026 was €1,372.2 per month, 4.6 percent higher year-on-year.
The Ministry also noted that “this average includes the amounts of the various types of pension (retirement, permanent disability, widow’s, orphan’s and survivors’ pensions).”
The average worker’s pension, received by more than two-thirds of all Spanish pensioners, was €1,573.7 gross per month.
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The Natixis index not only measures pension by income alone. Natixis and CoreData Research also analysed retirement finances, material well-being, health and quality of life, putting them together in a final score intended to reflect an overall sense of financial security and well-being in retirement.
Interestingly, even though Spanish pensions don’t stand out from the crowd according to Natixis, a February 2026 study by German research firm DataPulse placed Spain among the few EU countries where pensions are enough to live on, along with Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania.
How long this remains the case in an increasingly expensive country, and with a progressively older population, remains to be seen.
According to the latest projections from Spain’s national stats body, INE, people aged 65 and over currently account for 21.1 percent of the Spanish population.
If the demographic trends used in the projection continue, that percentage is set to reach 30.9 percent by around 2076.
However, reports emerged recently that the Spanish government is preparing an increase in state pensions from January 2027.
The final increase is not yet confirmed, Spanish media reports suggest, but previous rises can serve as a guide.
To protect purchasing power, state benefits in Spain are adjusted each year in line with the average year-on-year Consumer Price Index (CPI).
In 2026, the increase was 2.7 percent. Taking into account available data and price forecasts, everything points to the adjustment to contributory pensions being above 3 percent in January 2027.
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Overall, it is generally considered the Spanish pensioners enjoy a relatively high quality of life in retirement, and most would place the country higher than on the Natixis index, especially when it comes to purchasing power over income.
Many would also argue that pensioners in Spain have it better than workers in the country.
Factors such a whether the pensioner enjoys a maximum contributory pension and whether they have paid off their property can have a large impact on the quality of their retirement, though.
As BNP Paribas explained in a recent study, because the Spanish pension system is heavily state-run and earnings-linked, workers who contribute at the maximum base during their careers reach retirement retaining a vast majority of their previous income.
By contrast, northern European nations like Sweden, Germany or the Netherlands have lower public replacement rates and pensioners rely more heavily on private or workplace pension funds to make up the shortfall in their more expensive countries.
