🇬🇧 United Kingdom vs 🇪🇸 Spain

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The United Kingdom currently owes about 2.1× as much as Spain — a gap of $2.29 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, the United Kingdom ranks 17th by debt-to-GDP and Spain 18th. Measured per person, the United Kingdom is 7th and Spain 19th.

Analysis

By total government debt, the United Kingdom ranks 4th and Spain 11th among the 135 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in the United Kingdom is roughly 1.5× that in Spain ($61,601 vs $40,311 per person).

Both countries carry debt above 100% of GDP — the United Kingdom at 102% and Spain at 101% — meaning each owes more than a full year's worth of national output. What that means for each depends on who holds the debt, in what currency and at what interest rate.

The gap between them is widening: the United Kingdom's debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($8K/sec vs $4K/sec for Spain), adding roughly $384,998,400 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the United Kingdom's population (70M) is about 1.4× Spain's (50M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

The United Kingdom and Spain are both grouped under this site's “Europe” region, so this is, in effect, an intra-regional comparison as well.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

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