Nearly a year has passed since preparations for Barcelona’s World Mobile Congress—one of the city’s most prominent events—were underway. During the final setup, a temporary material handler was crushed by a heavy load and died instantly. The 21-year-old was among the workers who lost their lives on the job. Last year, 721 workers died in work-related accidents. They woke up, left for work, and never returned; some perished during the workday, others on the way to or from work.
This week, Spain’s Ministry of Labor released provisional figures on work-related fatalities from the previous year. The headline takeaway is a decline in the accident rate compared with the year before, with 17% fewer deaths. Although provisional and subject to review for methodological reasons that typically add a few more cases, Spain has recorded a first decline in five years, averaging about two fatalities per day at work.
“This drop is not enough and immediate action is needed to end this situation,” said representatives from the union UGT. A negative note is that the 2023 data is not the lowest in the series, and the ongoing loss of life persists this year as well. Recently, a worker at a road resurfacing project in Polinyà (Vallès Occidental) was killed after being struck by a compactor. Over the past 30 years, more than 30,000 people have lost their lives in work-related incidents in Spain. Between 1994 and 2023, authorities recorded a total of 31,429 fatalities.
Construction remains the second most dangerous sector and the one where fatalities are highest on an annual basis, in proportional terms. Data for 2023 show that a laborer is about five times more likely to die on the job than a service-sector worker. While the most dangerous sector again appeared to be agriculture, which is currently roading and city-center work, it is in that field where the death rate on a workday is almost six times higher than in services and more than double that of manufacturing.
Workplace fatalities constitute only a minority of the total number of accidents recorded. Official data show that in 2023 there were 624,911 incidents that led to an employee going on sick leave. This figure marks a 1.1% drop from the previous year, though unions caution that the statistics may carry biases.
Unions point out that the overall decrease largely stems from a sharp drop in pandemic-era reporting in health and social services. In 2022, COVID-19 cases in those sectors still counted as work accidents, and early 2023 saw a resurgence tied to the Omicron variant.
Excluding COVID-19 cases from the 2022–2023 comparison would reveal an increase in workplace accidents with leave, both in absolute terms and in incidence rates.Several industry sectors already show rising incidence: wholesale and retail trade (3.5%), water supply, sanitation and waste management (3.4%), hospitality (2.1%), and manufacturing (2%). There is concern among unions that without meaningful improvements in working conditions, 2024 could see another uptick in accident rates.
Subsequently, road accidents have risen as a troubling trend in the 2023 statistics. In particular, “in itinere” accidents, which occur while commuting to and from work, increased by 7.3% from the previous year, totaling 85,327 incidents. Road travel remains a primary reason for Catalan workers to be on the roads, and a recent survey notes that one in three daily trips in Catalonia are work-related, with commuting distances having grown significantly over the past three decades.
The government coalition has signaled intent to pursue policy updates in the realm of occupational risk prevention. Over the past four years, the regulatory framework has seen limited changes aimed at better controlling extreme temperature risks. The current plan is to launch a comprehensive revision of the risk prevention law, with a focus on addressing psychosocial risks that have surged in recent years and on strengthening gender perspectives. Critics from unions argue there has been insufficient attention to hazards affecting workers in sectors with higher female participation, calling for more robust detection and protection across the board.