The collaboration between real estate owners and operators specializing in flexible workspaces is emerging as one of the main growth opportunities for the coworking sector in Spain. This is one of the conclusions from the Coworking Summit 2026, organized by the Spanish Association of Coworking (ACW), a few days ago.
The association believes that the maturity achieved by operators favors new forms of collaboration with building owners. Through these agreements, owners provide the properties and operators manage them, incorporating services and solutions tailored to the needs of businesses. For ACW, this model can help expand and diversify the flexible office offering and facilitate its integration with traditional workspaces.
“Flexibility is key to our solutions. We add services and professional management: we take responsibility for the complete customer experience so that companies can focus on their core activity,” says Eduardo Salsamendi, president of ACW.
In this sense, the association argues that sector growth should not be measured solely by the opening of new spaces or revenue growth, but also by the quality of services, user experience, and the financial strength of businesses.
New Collaboration Models for the Real Estate Market
The evolution of the relationship between owners and operators has been one of the issues addressed at the meeting. Salvador Aguilar, Head of Flexible Office Solutions at CBRE Spain, analyzed how companies seek to adapt their space needs without taking on large upfront investments. The combination of traditional and flexible offices in the same building, along with specialized management, offers new possibilities to respond to this demand.
For his part, Albert Alcober, COO of Colonial SFL and CEO of Utopicus, highlighted the value of combining high-quality properties with flexible services that allow companies to adapt their offices to the size of their teams and to changes in their activity, without sacrificing a good location or the customization of spaces.
Large Corporations Present New Growth Opportunities
According to JLL data presented during the Coworking Summit 2026, only 3% of large corporations use flexible spaces for more than 10% of their office portfolios. This figure underscores the growth runway the sector still has among large companies.
Laura Caballero, Head of Research & Strategy, and Teresa Císcar, Head of Flex Office Advisory, both from JLL, have focused on the need to better understand companies’ priorities when selecting workspace. Location, flexibility, price, customization, and services are among the factors that shape their decisions. In this context, improving knowledge of available solutions and communicating their value can help more companies incorporate flexible offices into their real estate strategies.
The adaptation of buildings to new ways of working has also been a prominent topic at the summit. Anna Gener, CEO of Savills Barcelona, linked the evolution of offices to attracting and retaining talent. Hybrid work and employees’ new expectations are driving demand for spaces that foster collaboration, well-being, and connectivity, while also incorporating sustainability and flexibility criteria.
Finally, José María Álvarez, president of the Spanish Association of Offices, argued for moving toward common criteria that enable evaluating and comparing workplaces. These criteria should consider both the building characteristics and the quality of services and the user experience, with the aim of bringing greater transparency to the market.
