Cooperatives are defined as companies made up of people who associate on the basis of free membership and voluntary deregistration to engage in business activities aimed at satisfying their economic and social needs and aspirations. They are characterised by their democratic structure and functioning, in accordance with the cooperative principles accepted and regulated at the regional, national and international levels. First tier cooperatives include:

• Worker-run cooperatives: cooperatives whose purpose is to provide their members with jobs through the joint organisation of the production of goods or services for third parties.
• Consumer and user cooperatives: cooperatives whose purpose is the supply of goods and services acquired from third parties or produced by themselves, for the use or consumption of the members and those who live with them.
• Housing cooperatives: individuals who need accommodation and/or premises for themselves and the people with whom they live.
• Agrifood cooperatives: cooperatives formed by owners of agricultural, livestock or forestry holdings whose purpose is to carry out all kinds of activities and operations aimed at making the most of these holdings, developing the rural world and improving the agricultural population.
• Community land use: cooperatives bringing together holders of rights to use and exploit land (or other immovable property subject to agricultural exploitation) who cede these rights to the cooperative for their common exploitation.
• Services cooperatives: cooperatives of owners of industrial or service holdings and professionals or artists working independently, with the aim of providing supplies and services or producing goods to improve the activities of their members.
• Marine cooperatives: cooperatives providing products and services and conducting operations aimed at improving the professional activity or operation of their members, with natural persons or legal entities who are owners of holdings dedicated to fishing activities or maritime-fishing and derived industries, as well as professionals engaged in these activities on a self-employed basis.
• Transport cooperatives: cooperatives of natural or legal persons, owners of transport companies or professionals who can carry out the activity of carriers (whether of persons, goods or mixed), and whose purpose is to carry out operations aimed at the economic and technical improvement of their members' holdings.
• Insurance cooperatives: those that carry out an insurance activity under the terms and with the requirements established in Law 50/1980, of 8 October 1980, on Insurance Contracts. They are also governed by the regulations set out in Law 27/1999, of 16 July, on Cooperatives.
• Healthcare cooperatives: cooperatives engaged in activities in the healthcare sector. They may be made up of healthcare providers, healthcare patients or both. In addition, they may develop related activities, including preventive activities. When medical professionals for cooperatives, the regulations on worker-run cooperatives shall apply. Where a cooperative is formed by the patients or recipients of healthcare, they shall be governed by the regulation on consumer or user cooperatives.
• Education cooperatives: cooperatives formed for the purpose of delivering teaching, complementary, extracurricular and other related activities, as well as to provide services that facilitate these activities. The rules for consumer and user cooperatives shall apply when they involve parents of pupils, legal representatives or even pupils. In case of associating teachers and service staff, they shall be governed by the rules of worker-run cooperatives.
• Credit cooperatives: cooperatives formed for the purpose of satisfying the credit and savings needs of their members. They fulfil the same functions as a bank, being linked to a social function or locality, offering loans for rural interest, thus having a greater presence in rural areas.

For more information, see the Law 27/1999, of July 16, 1999, on Cooperatives.

Not-for-profit companies, with a democratic structure and management, which carry out a voluntary insurance activity, complementary to the social security system. They are characterised by the democratic participation of all members in the governing bodies, equal rights and obligations of the members, and the allocation of the economic surplus to the their own assets and the distribution of the profits obtained among all mutual members.

For more information, see Royal Decree 1430/2002, of 27 December 2002, approving the Regulations on Mutual Societies.

These are trading companies in which the majority of the share capital is held by workers who provide paid services in the company personally and directly by virtue of a permanent employment relationship. No shareholders may hold shares or holdings constituting more than one third of the share capital, except in the cases provided for by law.

Furthermore, this entity type is required to ensure that the number of hours worked per year by workers hired for an indefinite period who are not shareholders does not exceed 49% of the total number of hours worked per year by all worker-members in the limited liability company.

For more information, please access the Law 44/2015, of 14 October, on Worker Owned and Participated Companies.

Those legally constituted trading companies or cooperative societies that engage in any economic activity involving the production or distribution of goods or services, and whose corporate purpose is the integration and social and labour training of people in a situation of social exclusion, will be considered insertion companies.

At the same time, insertion companies must provide at-risk social exclusion workers with socio-occupational insertion itineraries. These are defined as intervention and accompaniment measures aimed at promoting their integration into the ordinary labour market.

These itineraries will consist of the set of services, benefits, processes, guidance actions, tutoring and personalised and assisted processes of paid work, on-the-job training, work and social habituation aimed at satisfying or solving specific problems arising from the situation of exclusion that poses an obstacle to the person being able to develop their insertion itinerary in the company. In order to do this, insertion companies must employ members of staff to provide tutoring and mentoring for the insertion.

Another key requirement for these companies is that they must maintain a minimum annual percentage of workers in the process of insertion, regardless of the contract type, of at least 30% during the first three years of activity and 50% of the total workforce from the fourth year onwards. Furthermore, the number of workers in the process of insertion must be at least two.

Therefore, the aim of insertion companies is not only the labour insertion of people at risk of social exclusion into the ordinary labour market, but also the improvement of the quality of life of these people.

For more information, see the Law 44/2007, of 13 December, for the regulation of the system of insertion companies.

Special Employment Centres are companies whose main purpose is to carry out a productive activity of goods or services, participating regularly in market operations, and whose aim is to provide disabled workers with productive and remunerated work, appropriate to their personal characteristics, while at the same time facilitating the inclusion of these people in the ordinary employment system. For this reason, these centres must provide, through the support units, the personal and social adjustment services required by disabled workers, according to their circumstances and in accordance with the regulations.

The staff of the special employment centres shall be made up of as many disabled workers as the nature of the production process allows and, in any case, at least 70%. For these purposes, non-disabled staff engaged in the provision of personal and social adjustment services shall not be included.

Special employment centres of social initiative are those that are promoted and owned by more than 50%, directly or indirectly, by one or more entities, whether public or private, that are non-profit making or that have their social character recognised in their Statutes.

For more information, please access the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2013, of 29 November, approving the Consolidated Text of the General Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and their Social Inclusion.

The Angler's Guilds (Cofradías in Spanish) are non-profit public law corporations with legal personality and full capacity to act for the fulfilment of their aims. Their primary objective is to represent the economic interests of fishing vessel owners and workers in the extractive sector of the sea.

These Guilds act as bodies for consultation and collaboration with the local and national administrations responsible for maritime fishing and the management of the fishing sector on issues of general interest, and specifically with regard to the extractive fishing activity and its commercialisation, especially in the small-scale and inshore sectors.

These Cofradias play a pivotal role in fostering a sustainable future for the fishing industry, while safeguarding the rights and interests of anglers, enhancing their working conditions and local development.

For more information, see Royal Decree 670/1978 of 11 March 1978 on Fishermen's Guilds.

Agricultural Transformation Companies, hereinafter referred to as ACTs, are civil-liability companies with their own legal personality, with an economic-social purpose. To be authorised, they must be incorporated and subsequently registered in the corresponding registry. These companies are engaged in the production, transformation and commercialisation of agricultural, livestock or forestry products. They also provide services that support the activities, including the improvement of the rural environment, agricultural promotion and development, as well as the provision of common services that serve that purpose. Agricultural associations facilitate greater participation of the sector in the entire food chain, thereby contributing to the rural environment’s sustainability.

For more information, see Royal Decree 1776/1981 of 3 August 1981, approving the Statute regulating Agricultural Processing Companies.

The Spanish Business Confederation of Social Economy (CEPES, standing for Confederación Empresarial Española de la Economía Social) has revealed that social economy actors in Spain account for 10% of the country’s GDP and contribute to 12.5% of employment. The social economy fabric is comprised of 43,000 enterprises and entities that collectively generate almost 2.2 million jobs.

The report prepared by CEPES, "The most relevant companies in the social economy 2022-2023" (2023), provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse range of businesses operating within the social economy in Spain.

The sample that forms the basis of this study comprises 3,310 companies with a total turnover of 206.2 billion euros and 471.4 million jobs.

In accordance with the typological criterion, the following social economy enterprises were identified in the sample under review:

Type of enterprise

1. Cooperatives
2. Angler's Guilds (Cofradías)
3. Worker-owned companies
4. Insertion companiesç
5. Agricultural processing companies
6. Special employment centres
7. Mutual societies
8. Foundations and associations
9. Business groups

1. Cooperatives: a total of 2,506, rep resenting 75.70% of the sample.
2. Angler's Guilds: a total of 199, representing 6.19% of the sample analysed.
3. Worker-owned companies: a total of 178, representing 5.54% of the companies studied.
4. Insertion companies: 159 companies, representing 4.98%.
5. Agricultural Processing Companies: 117 of these, 3.64% of the companies analysed.
6. Special Employment Centres: a total of 105 accounting for 3.27%.
7. Mutuals: 20 in total, or 0.62% of the sample.
8. Foundations and associations: 15 in total or 0.47%.
9. Business groups: these are the fewest, with a total of 11 or 0.34%.

On the other hand, according to company size, the sample is divided as follows:

Company size

1. Micro-business
2. Small businesses
3. Medium-sized businesses
4. Big businesses

1. Micro-enterprises (less than 9 workers): these are the most numerous, representing a total of 39% of the sample.
2. Small enterprises (between 10 and 49 employees): they are the second most numerous type, with a total of 36% of the enterprises surveyed.
3. Medium-sized enterprises (between 50 and 249 employees): account for 17% of the total.
4. Large enterprises (more than 250 employees): the smallest group, representing 10% of the sample.

According to the economic sector in which they carry out their activity, Social Economy enterprises included in the sample are divided as follows:

Economic sector

1. Agriculture, livestock, forestry and fisheries
2. Services
3. Construction
4. Industry
5. Multi-sectoral

1. Agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing: by far the most abundant sector. This sector accounts for 74.2% of the total number of companies studied.
2. Services: 16.3% of the sample.
3. Construction: 5.4% of the sample analysed.
4. Industry: with a somewhat lower representation than the construction sector, companies dedicated to industry account for 4.1% of those analysed.
5. Multisectoral: by far the smallest sector, accounting for 0.1% of the sample.

Public policies are defined as a set of actions aimed at satisfying the general interest or solving a public problem or need. These actions may take the form of rules, strategies, plans, programmes, measures, or any other equivalent denomination.

Spain is implementing a range of public policies to promote, consolidate and boost the Spanish social economy. These policies are being developed by the Ministry for Labour and the Social Economy and various regional administrations in accordance with their respective competences.

In addition to the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) on the Social Economy and Care, which plays a central role in boosting the Spanish Social Economy, the following public policies can also be highlighted:

The first item on the agenda is the approval of the Spanish Social Economy Strategy for the period 2023-2027, as agreed by the Council of Ministers on 11 April 2023. This strategy is aligned with the objectives of the 2030 Agenda and the European Social Economy Action Plan. It comprises four priority axes and 18 lines of action, which are specified in 133 actions.

The four priority axes are as follows:

1. The visibility and participation of the Social Economy in the institutional sphere and in the regulatory framework.
2. Improving competitiveness by promoting innovation and digital transformation.
3. Entrepreneurship and emerging sectors through the promotion of Social Economy enterprises as a real option for entrepreneurship.
4. Social and territorial sustainability by contributing to gender equality, generational change and territorial cohesion.

The specific actions include promoting the creation of collaborative platforms, supporting collective entrepreneurship in rural areas and supporting the integration of women in vulnerable situations or at risk of vulnerability through Social Economy formulas.

All these public policies seek to grow the Spanish Social Economy while at the same time improving the economy, society and people's quality of life and promoting the welfare of people over capital.