The TRG (originally Tarugo Conf) celebrated its tenth edition this weekend at La Nave, in Madrid. Ten years is no small feat in the Spanish technological ecosystem. What began as the meeting of a digital community around a newsletter, La Bonilista, created by David Bonilla, has become an essential event for those They build the future with code, data and a huge dose of faith.
For three days, more than a thousand people, including entrepreneurs, developers, designers, investors, disseminators and supporters like me, filled the space with contagious energy. The TRG is not a typical conference: there are no ties or recited PowerPoints. It’s a social laboratory where the engineer who builds an artificial intelligence startup coexists with the designer who seeks financing for an educational project or the scientist who wants to launch his own spin-off.
The tone is optimistic, collaborative, even festive: a community that takes the work seriously, but not itself. And, also a network of friends, and a moment to experience innovation also as a family.
This culture of “doing”, so rare in our country, is what explains why the TRG has resisted for a decade. But it is enough to leave La Nave to feel the densest air in the system again: that of taxation, bureaucracy and institutional distrust.
According to an analysis published by The EconomistSpain taxes the profitability of savings twelve points above the OECD average. While in Europe and all developed countries the maximum rate on capital gains is around 18.2%, here the Treasury reaches 30% for the highest brackets.
It is the third increase since 2020, in a context in which Portugal, Cyprus and even Greece have chosen to reduce or even eliminate this tax.
The result is that capital, in Spain, is penalized twice: first when it generates business profits and then when those profits are reinvested or converted into savings. This is what the analyst Tax FoundationAlex Mengden, calls “double taxation on success.”
In other words, whoever risks their money to create wealth not only assumes the risk of losing it, but also the certainty that, if things go well, the State will keep a disproportionate share.
And this is where the great contradiction appears. Because the same institutions that talk about digitalization, artificial intelligence and technological transition are the ones that suffocate the foundation that allows all of this to happen: savings, investment, private initiative.
The official discourse promotes a “innovative ecosystem”, but the fiscal and regulatory environment is still designed for the last century, when progress depended on the public budget and not on the collaboration between talent, capital and knowledge.
The contrast with other countries is evident. In the United States, venture capital and stock options They are daily instruments of talent incentive and retention. In much of Europe, capital gains are taxed moderately or credited when reinvested in productive projects.
In Spain, on the other hand, the message is clear: the more risk you take, the more you pay.. This kills the most valuable impulse of all, the desire to undertake.
And yet, technological entrepreneurship is probably the best lever to solve the old problem of Spanish productivity. We have spent decades regretting that our GDP per hour worked is below the European average, that SMEs do not scale, that innovation is concentrated in a few large companies.
But advances in software, automation and artificial intelligence offer a historic opportunity to break that ceiling. Productivity does not improve by decree or subsidy, It improves when a company incorporates knowledge, technology and efficient organization.
And that is precisely what the entrepreneurs who meet today in places like the TRG bring. I have had the opportunity to talk with some technological entrepreneur who has had the opportunity to live for four months in Silicon Valley and who lamented the wasteland that Spain has become.
If Spain managed to convert its technical talent into a productive fabric, we could leave behind the low added value model that condemns us to mediocre salaries and fragile growth. But for that to happen we have to go from penalizing profit to rewarding creation, from suspecting the businessman to facilitating his work. It is not enough to express the best intentions or finance campaigns about the digital future; We must dismantle the barriers that prevent that future from happening.
Because taxation is not neutral, but expresses a moral vision of success and risk. That is, the government is not punishing speculation when it taxes savings and investment above its environment, but rather discouraging prosperity.
And a State that demands more from those who risk than from those who obey is choosing, without saying it, a type of citizen: dependent, cautious, resigned. Zero surprises.
At the TRG, every conversation gave off the opposite. There was a desire to build, to export, to improve. Agreements have been closed (congratulations Petal!). The projects talked about health, energy, education, sustainability, culture: people looking for solutions, not subsidies.
But the system seems designed to test them: eternal procedures, initial costs, legal uncertainty and, on top of that, increasing taxes on the capital necessary to sustain innovation.
Therefore, when I hear official speeches about “the technological Spain of the future”, It’s hard for me not to think about that dissonance between words and actions. The words speak of competitiveness, of talent, of digitalization. The facts tax savings, make investment difficult and reward dependency.
The TRG shows that there is a Spain that moves, that creates and that innovates. But it needs oxygen. And that oxygen is called freedom to invest, stability to plan and confidence to risk.
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