Spain has channelled a large share of its RRF funds into industrial policy through PERTEs (Proyectos Estratégicos para la Recuperación y Transformación Económica), a new framework for public-private collaboration designed to outlast the RRF. Despite their growing prominence, PERTEs have received little scholarly attention.

This paper examines PERTE-VEC, Spain’s second-largest industrial-policy PERTE, which seeks to build a domestic electric-vehicle (EV) value chain. It has two aims. First, it reconstructs the programme’s implementation, showing that it faced major difficulties that prompted mid-course adjustments to its governance arrangements and policy objectives. Second, it assesses the extent to which PERTE-VEC has advanced its stated goal of establishing an integrated EV value chain in Spain and securing higher-value-added segments of the EV global value chain, thereby moving the country beyond the “stay-as-assembly” equilibrium associated with Dependent Market Economies.

Empirically, the paper proceeds in two steps. It first maps the conditionality mechanisms, performance indicators, and enforcement tools attached to PERTE-VEC funding, while tracing the profile, size, and value-chain position of recipient firms. Second, it studies the implementation of four major projects financed through this PERTE. This exercise sheds light on whether Europe’s much-touted return to industrial policy entails stronger state intervention or rather corporate welfare.