[vimes656]

Conditions are improving in Madrid and Barcelona for startups, but in general I'd say the laws, the banks, the bureaucrats and the system in general are all very startup unfriendly.

That I think it's the root of the problem. Dev salaries don't rise because there is no real competition for top talent. Many established software companies in Spain can get away with mediocre programmers with low salaries because they operate in captive markets and the quality of their products don't really matter.

If politicians really wanted to fix this problem they'd make it easier for new companies to compete with the old ones, but they are doing just the opposite.