Presentation of the report ‘Digital Society in Spain. The year everything changed’

1 June 2021, 12:00. In-person and online.
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We present this year’s edition of the ‘Digital Society in Spain’ report, outlining the main trends that highlight the progress that the country is making in its digital transformation. The event will be presided over by Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, and Sergio Oslé, Telefónica Spain CEO. The presentation will take place on Tuesday 1 June at 12 p.m. at the auditorium at Espacio Fundación Telefónica Madrid.

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Spain has been the only country which, despite being one of those most affected by the pandemic, has not experienced network problems, coping spectacularly with increased demand for bandwidth and massive growth in mobile data and voice traffic. We presented this year’s edition of the report outlining the main trends that highlight the progress that the country is making in its digital transformation. It took place on Tuesday 1 June in the auditorium at Espacio Fundación Telefónica, was streamed online, with social media users following along using the hashtags #SDIE and #SociedadDigital. The recording is now available to watch.

The event was presided over by Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, and Sergio Oslé, Telefónica Spain CEO. Carmen Morenés, managing director of Fundación Telefónica, and Pablo Gonzalo, head of Digital Culture and of Espacio Fundación Telefónica, also took part.

This was the presentation (spanish):

The pandemic and the state of alarm declared on 14 March 2020 to contain it demonstrated that Spanish society is a networked one, and that thanks to digitalisation, Spanish people can develop the resilience necessary to overcome adversity in the most challenging situations. In just a few weeks, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital habits by Spanish people both at home and in the workplace by five years. Normalising the digitalisation of Spanish society, in all productive sectors, yielded unstoppable progress in 2020 in terms of the role of technology, according to ‘Digital society in Spain 2020–2021: the year everything changed’.

Science and technology are increasingly coming together to provide solutions to big problems. Artificial intelligence has contributed to the fight to control the pandemic:
from curbing the spread of the virus to quick diagnoses to researching new drugs. COVID-19 has also pushed companies onto the cloud. Almost a third of the productive sector now uses some type of cloud service. What’s more, working from home is now here to stay and some corporate processes have been automated.

You can watch it in our media library and also listen to it as a podcast on all major platforms.

Digital Society in Spain 2020-2021

2020 marked a turning point in the world we live in. For the first time in recent history, a global pandemic forced most of the world’s population into lockdown, limiting their freedom of movement. Thanks to digital technologies, a large part of economic activity was able to continue online, with working from home becoming the norm to guarantee continuity. Spain passed the trial by fire imposed by the crisis, demonstrating the robustness of its communications infrastructures, which were able to cope with the sudden and unexpected rise in network traffic.

This edition of ‘Digital Society in Spain’ analyses the impact of COVID-19 on companies’ and people’s technology habits in the country, and reflects the level of progress made in developing infrastructure and telecommunications services, as well as in innovation and in deploying major cutting-edge technologies.

As in previous years, this work is based on three information sources: the main indicators of the digital economy, both national and international; surveys conducted on clients of Telefónica’s business units; and finally, a regional perspective from Spain’s autonomous communities.

‘Digital Society in Spain’ aims to reflect the path the country is following to become a networked society, a transformation that has been accelerated by the pandemic and comes with numerous challenges, the most important of which is ensuring that no-one is left behind, thereby guaranteeing an inclusive transition.