The Treasury publishes the list of defaulters: Isabel Pantoja, Bertín Osborne, and Arda Turan are included.

At the end of 2024, the Treasury had €16.138 billion outstanding from large debtors; that is, individuals and companies that owe more than €600,000. The figure is 5.9% higher than in 2023, although the number of defaulters has dropped to 5,997, a 1.4% decrease, which suggests that those who owe more owe more.

This is evident from the latest edition of the list of defaulters published by the Tax Agency, an imaginative resource used by the Treasury to try to speed up the collection of outstanding payments through publicity, and which is a topic of discussion year after year due to the celebrities who appear on it. As previously reported, €16.138 billion is outstanding , a figure that, for example, would be enough to pay Social Security pensions for an entire month (in May, the payroll reached €13.5 billion).

However, there is a nuance: if duplicate amounts are subtracted, which are amounts that are repeated because they correspond to the primary debtors and their jointly liable parties, the 2024 figure stands at 13.697 billion, 8.5% more than in 2023.

Furthermore, the document only includes debts that have not been paid voluntarily, that are outstanding as of December 31, 2024, and that are not deferred or suspended. In 2024, a total of 4,920 companies met these conditions , with outstanding payments totaling €14.558 billion, and 1,077 individuals, who together owe €1.579 billion.

And among the latter, there are some well-known names. Among the new additions are Bertín Osborne , with a debt of 865,000 euros; Isabel Pantoja (one million euros); and soccer player Arda Turan (1.2 million euros). Actress Paz Vega, who owed the Treasury 2.2 million euros as of December 31, also returned; banker Mario Conde, with 3.7 million euros; referee José María Enríquez Negreira (1.09 million euros); Joan Gaspart, former president of FC Barcelona (994,000 euros); and singer Merche (844,000 euros).

As for companies, the list includes subsidiaries of Abengoa, a group that, after acknowledging a multi-million-dollar debt in 2014, began a free fall that ended with the dissolution of the parent company and the auctioning of its assets. At the end of 2024, Abengoa Agua owed €14 million; Abengoa Innovación, €10 million; Abengoa SA, €8.4 million; and Abengoa Abenewco, €30 million.

The list includes several housing developers that collapsed during the years of adjustment following the 2008 crash. For example, Reyal Urbis, which was founded in 2006 as a result of the takeover bid launched by the Reyal Group, owned by Rafael Santamaría, one of the "real estate lords," for Banesto's real estate company. The fact is that the company collapsed when the bubble burst, and seventeen years later, it still owes €277 million.

Beyond the publicity, there are a wide variety of reasons why individuals and companies that have not yet made peace with the Treasury are reluctant to appear on this list. Precisely for this reason, before the end of the year, the Tax Agency received €97.95 million from individuals who thus avoided appearing on the ranking . Some paid only part of the outstanding amount (a total of €41.23 million), and others the entire amount (€56.72 million). Then there is the amount that has been paid throughout the year with a view to not appearing on the 2025 ranking; according to the Treasury, €191.5 million was paid between January and June, a figure that pales in comparison to the total amount owed by Spain's biggest defaulters.

It's worth remembering that the now-famous "blacklist" was an initiative of Popular Party minister Cristóbal Montoro, back in 2015. "It's about making them pay, it couldn't be said more clearly and in silver," said the then Minister of Finance. Indeed, many have since paid, even more so since the PSOE government and its Podemos partners agreed in 2021 to raise the threshold for entering the ranking from one million euros to 600,000.