According to the National Construction Confederation (CNC), 1.130 public tenders in Spain were left without a bidder between January and June 2026, with a combined budget of more than 707 million euros. The employers' association, presenting the report at a press conference on Thursday, said the gap between prices fixed by public administrations and real execution costs, worsened by rising materials and energy prices linked to the conflict in the Middle East, is behind the trend.
The monthly average of void tenders has risen from 162 to 188, a 16% increase versus the pace recorded after the war in Ukraine, according to CNC. The 707 million euros lost in just six months already equals 80% of the 882,6 million euros registered over the full twelve months covered by the confederation's previous analysis. CNC president Pedro Fernández Alén described the situation as "asphyxiating for thousands of construction companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, which are being forced to work at a loss or shut down directly".
CNC data show that 82% of the void tenders correspond to contracts under 500.000 euros, mostly issued by regional governments and municipalities, even though these smaller procedures face fewer barriers to entry. The regions with the highest number of void tenders are Andalusia with 284, Catalonia with 149, the Valencia region with 127 and Extremadura with 106. Catalonia also concentrates the largest economic volume, 183,7 million euros across 199 contracts, including a logistics warehouse on the A.27-28-29 plot of the ZAL Port del Prat, valued at 49,8 million euros, which received no offers at all. Other high-value examples cited by CNC include the new City of Justice building in Valladolid at 35 million euros, fuel depots and pipelines in Cádiz at 32 million euros, and a protected-housing development in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria worth more than 29 million euros.
Beyond outright void tenders, CNC counted 747 additional procedures awarded with only a single bidder, worth 448 million euros, bringing the total volume of public works with insufficient competition to 1.877 procedures and more than 1.155 million euros. Fernández Alén said Spain has an 18% higher share of single-bidder contracts than the EU average, and the confederation is calling on the government to reactivate the exceptional price-revision clause used in 2022, adapted to the current inflationary situation, together with automatic mechanisms to update prices in works contracts.