More than 4,000 Catalan companies are already operating in Italy, and the number continues to grow. The business is thriving, investment keeps increasing, and even the coldest diplomatic climate between Rome and Madrid seems to have no effect on it. But there is one area where this success does not always translate: the digital.
While Spain and Italy are going through one of the most tense diplomatic moments in recent years, due to frictions over immigration management, the commercial relations between both countries seem to follow a completely different logic than politics. In fact, according to web positioning consultants like Erica Scarná, who with her project EricaWebLab helps Spanish and Italian brands enter international markets, many Catalan companies that make the leap to Italy do so with their business already validated, but without having adapted their online presence to the Italian market, a mismatch that ultimately limits results that on paper should be good.
According to data from the Generalitat, more than 4,000 Catalan companies already have some type of presence in Italy, which ranks among the five preferred destinations for Catalan entrepreneurs to invest abroad. On par with France or Brazil, and only behind the United States and Mexico. The sectors showing the most momentum in this bilateral relationship are technology, automotive, materials production, food industry, and retail, according to the Govern itself.
A relationship that keeps growing
Business optimism shows no signs of slowing down. According to a report by FormaItalia, a professional services firm specialising in the Italian market, 70% of Spanish companies already established in Italy plan to increase their investment in the coming months, and as many as 87% will do so before 2029.
Alfredo Izquierdo, director of the firm, summarises the confidence that drives so many Catalan companies to cross the border: "if a business works well in Spain, it will also work in Italy". Izquierdo clarifies, however, that the leap requires paying attention to the regulatory, labour, and tax differences between both countries, which are not always obvious at first glance.
That same caution with which Catalan companies approach Italian bureaucracy, however, rarely translates to the digital realm. And there, according to several industry consultants, is where much of the expansion starts to fail.
The mirage of proximity
"The biggest risk for a Catalan company expanding to Italy is not the bureaucracy or the political tension of the moment: it is assuming that the Italian market behaves like the Spanish one just because both countries share a Latin root and Mediterranean culture", explains Erica Scarná, international SEO consultant specialised in the Italy-Spain axis.
According to Scarná, the pattern often repeats among the clients who come to her: businesses that work perfectly on paper in Catalonia, with a validated product and clear demand, but whose Italian website barely generates traffic or leads because it has merely translated the Spanish site without adapting it to how the Italian user actually searches.
The problem, the consultant points out, is not linguistic, but rather a matter of search behaviour: words that have a high search volume in Spanish may barely have traffic in Italian, or mean something completely different depending on the sector.
The technical details that make the difference
Among the most common mistakes experts detect when analysing failed expansions, three stand out:
- The structure of the website (own domain, subdomain, or subfolder), a decision that conditions a large part of the medium-term positioning and that many companies resolve without sufficient prior analysis.
- A complete technical implementation, which indicates to Google which version of the site to show based on the user's language and location, through the correct use of hreflang tags, and whose lack of reciprocity between versions nullifies much of its effect.
- Google Business Profile listings designed only for the Spanish market, even when the company already has a showroom, office, or physical point of sale in Italy.
Companies that incorporate an SEO specialist from the early stages of expansion, rather than as a last-minute fix once the problem is detected, usually arrive with these points already resolved. This, in practice, translates into a smoother entry into the Italian market. The reason, according to Scarnà, is simple: the positioning strategy should not be an afterthought, but rather an integral part of the expansion plan from day one.
A fertile ground, but not guaranteed
The commercial link between Catalonia and Italy is based on a solid foundation: thousands of companies have already travelled that path before, and the figures for bilateral investment continue to rise even amid the diplomatic cooling between Rome and Madrid.
But, as professionals who accompany these digital expansion processes remind, the geographical and cultural proximity between Spain and Italy can work against when it translates into overconfidence. The experience of those who have already made the leap suggests that the business may be ready for Italy, but it only truly reaches the Italian customer when the digital strategy is tailored for them, and not just a copy of what already works at home.
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