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Unicaja is one of the companies based in the province. SUR Business Malaga province ranks high in company production, but lags behind in number of large headquartersMalaga hosts 16 business headquarters, which means there is less than one per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to more than six in Madrid province
Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 14:32
Malaga currently stands as the leading province in Andalucía and the third in Spain for the highest total number of companies. However, despite this high volume of business creation, the province lags significantly regarding the presence of large corporate headquarters.
According to a recent study by the consultancy firm Accumin Intelligence, Malaga is prolific in small business production but is outperformed by Seville in terms of scale. For example, in the bracket of firms employing between 100 and 249 workers, Malaga has 284 companies compared to Seville's 479. The gap continues with larger enterprises; Seville hosts 245 companies with more than 250 employees, whereas Malaga has only 186.
Malaga also lags behind when it comes to larde companies with more than 1,000 employees.
The province hosts 16 headquarters of companies with more than1,000 workers. Among them, the most important are Unicaja (8,281 employees), Mayoral (403 workers) and EPAM (1,500). In Andalucía, ahead of the Costa del Sol is, once again, Seville (33). In Spain as a whole, Madrid (454), Barcelona (157), Valencia (49), Vizcaya (35), A Coruña (35), the Balearic Islands (30) and Murcia (26) are ahead of Malaga.
16 headquarters of large companies in Malaga
compared to more than twice as many in Seville
The study concludes that economic power is not only highly concentrated but also leaves vast areas of Spain in the shadows. In Andalucía, all provinces have company headquarters with more than 1,000 employees: six in Granada and Cadiz, seven in Jaén and Cordoba, eight in Huelva and 11 in Almeria. But in some provinces of Castilla y León, such as León, Zamora, Ávila and Segovia, there are none, as is the case in Teruel.
The Accumin Intelligence data does not measure how many companies with more than 1,000 employees there are in each province, but rather the headquarters of these companies, i.e. the headquarters of the corporate groups where Spain's major economic decisions are made. The consultancy firm has detected a great core of power in the centre of mainland Spain, with Madrid with the highest number of headquarters. The second great focus is in the north-east, with the province of Barcelona as the great business capital of the Mediterranean arc.
Headquarters per 100,000 inhabitants
The study also measures the existence of corporate headquarters in relative terms, i.e. by population size. In the case of Malaga, the 16 company headquarters mean that there are 0.90 (fewer than one) per 100,000 inhabitants. This contrasts with the 6.61 in Madrid (454 company headquarters) or the more than three in A Coruña and Vizcaya. The Galician and the Basque provinces even have more headquarters in relative terms than Barcelona (2.68 headquarters per 100,000 inhabitants). Zaragoza, the Balearic Islands, Alava, Navarre and Cuenca also have more than two company headquarters per 100,000 inhabitants.
0.90 large company headquarters in Malaga per 100,000 inhabitants
This figure contrasts with 6.61 in Madrid and 1.68 in Seville
In Andalucía, ahead of Malaga are Seville (1.68 headquarters per 100,000 inhabitants), Huelva (1.50), Almeria (1.44) and Jaén (1.07). Meanwhile, Cordoba is tied with the Costa del Sol, with 0.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. Behind Malaga are Granada (0.64) and Cadiz (0.48).
Provinces with between 15 and 49 headquarters of major corporations, like Malaga, tend to be either regional capitals or coastal provinces with significant industrial, logistics or tourism activity. In these provinces, the study says, companies play a dual role: they act as local economic anchors, supporting skilled employment, supply chains and professional services, while also serving as global connectors, linking peripheral territories to markets and decision-making often based in other provinces.
Places such as Malaga, "may not lead in the absolute number of headquarters, but they act as secondary powers: balancing the corporate map, driving sectoral innovation and sustaining key nodes in value chains such as automotive, energy, tourism or agriculture".