Madrid leads the ranking of Spanish provinces with more gazelle companies, according to Iberinform, from the commercial information processed with its tool Insight View, in its report ‘The profile of gazelle companies in Spain 2020‘.
The study, which aims to detect where young, fast-growing companies are concentrated, shows that Madrid is a cluster for this type of company, with one out of every four gazelle companies in Spain.

The ranking by province is as follows:
- Madrid: 103 gazelle companies (21.5% of the total)
- Barcelona:37 gazelle companies (7.7% of the total)
- Murcia: 34 gazelle companies (7.1% of the total)
- Valencia:29 gazelle companies (6.0% of the total)
- Malaga:25 gazelle companies (5.2% of the total).
- Alicante: 18 gazelle companies (3.8% of the total)
- Seville: 16 gazelle companies (3.3% of the total)
There are only three Spanish provinces that do not have any gazelle companies: Burgos, Cuenca and Segovia. Neither is registered in the two autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla.
By city, Madrid groups 62 gazelle companies, 12.9% of the total, well above the second city, Barcelona, where 15 gazelle companies (3.1%) reside.
What is a gazelle company?
Gazelle companies are those that meet these requirements:
- They are growing at over 20% per year in each of the last three years.
- They have more than 10 employees.
- They have invoiced more than 500,000 euros in the last financial year.
- They are between 2 and 5 years old.
The situation in Spain in 2020
The study indicates that in 2020 there are 480 gazelle companies in Spain, 54% less than the annual year. Iberinform clarifies that “the deterioration of these fast-growing economic sources was already taking place at the end of 2019, before the declaration of the pandemic”.
We can therefore conclude that the fall is not exclusive to the effects of Covid-19. Although, Iberinform anticipates an even greater fall of the gazelle companies for the next year, since the pandemic supposes an enormous difficulty to maintain growths superior to 20%.
Gazelle companies by sector
According to the types of activity, the ranking is as follows
- Transport of goods by road: 52 /10.8%).
- Construction of residential buildings: 31 (6.5%)
- Restaurants and food stands: 18 (3.8%)
- Electrical installations: 16 (3.3%)
- Manufacture of metallic carpentry: 14 (2.9%)
- Plumbing, heating system installations: 13 (2.7%)
- Manufacture of metal structures: 11 (2.3%).
- Specialized construction: 11 (2.3%)
- Computer programming: 10 (2.1%)
- Technical engineering services: 8 (1.7%)
Gazelle companies by legal form and size
Most Gazelle companies take the legal form of a Limited Company (97.5%), because, according to Iberinform, it requires a lower initial capital contribution. To a lesser extent we find some cases of Public Limited Companies (1.9%) and isolated cases of Cooperative Societies (0.4%) and Limited Labour Companies (0.2%).
Overall, gazelle companies in Spain in 2020 had a joint turnover of 2,800 million euros, employing 16,600 people.
By size, 2.7% have reached the size of large companies (13), 14.4% are medium-sized companies (69), while the vast majority, 82.9%, are small companies (398).