In the south of Gran Canaria—that paradise with a residential area—the sun shines 300 days a year, the number of tourist beds exceeds 100.000, and thousands of Europeans arrive every morning eager to spend. But while Nordic brands—Spotify, LEGO, IKEA, Pandora—are born with the world in mind, southern companies are born and die in Playa del Inglés.
The question is awkward: why aren't international businesses generated in an international destination?
The answer lies in the tourism model itself. In southern Gran Canaria, most of the money comes from abroad… and goes out just as quickly. Tour operators, banks, airlines, insurance companies, wholesalers… almost everything is in the hands of foreign companies. And what's left is distributed among small family businesses that survive on rental contracts, commissions, and repeat customers.
Local muscle has never been strengthened to compete abroad, because the business has always been "inside." Inside the hotel, inside the shopping center, inside a closed ecosystem where the outside world exists only as a captive market, not as a destination for expansion.
While in Copenhagen or Helsinki a startup launches its product with 10 countries in mind from day one, in Maspalomas they focus on San Fernando. While Pandora generates 99% of its sales outside Denmark, local brands here don't even leave the municipality.
And that, in part, is the reason for success.
Mass tourism turned the south into a bubble of easy profitability. Why look abroad if the customer comes alone, every winter, straight to the counter? There was no pressure to innovate, no need to seek out new markets. What is a handicap in the Nordic countries—the size of their populations—here has been a blessing that, in the long run, anesthetized business ambition.
But the South isn't doomed. It has advantages that the Nordic countries would gladly pay for: air connectivity, a ZEC zone, a year-round climate for production, proximity to West Africa, and a triangle with Latin America. What it lacks isn't sunshine; it's a corporate culture that thinks beyond the tourist and the next day.
For companies in southern Gran Canaria to be global from day one, they must stop thinking only about beds and start thinking about platforms, products, digital services, and scalable models. Schools must be taught to export knowledge, not just to welcome visitors. And we must stop viewing Sweden as a world apart and start seeing it for what it is: a possible recipe, if we change the ingredients.
