A new mapping of the Iberian e-commerce landscape, published this week by Lengow's Adrian Gmelch on LinkedIn, sets out the operating reality for brands selling in Spain and Portugal in 2026: a market dominated by international generalists, infiltrated by Chinese platforms and held together by a thick layer of local specialists.

The map, presented as a four-quadrant chart structured along two axes - generalist versus specialist, and pure player versus retailer - lists more than 40 marketplaces currently active across Spain and Portugal. According to the author, the chart distinguishes Iberian-born platforms, which appear enclosed, from foreign-origin marketplaces, shown without enclosure but included because they actively operate in the region. The framework follows the same methodology Lengow had previously applied to its France map, and the comparison itself is part of the argument.

The generalist quadrant is by far the most crowded. Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, Miravia, OLX, Temu and TikTok Shop sit on the pure-player side, alongside Iberian-born players Privalia, Wallapop, Milanuncios and KuantoKusta. On the retailer side of the same generalist axis, Carrefour, El Corte Ingles, and Worten - the latter operating in both Portugal and Spain - represent the mass-market retailers that have transitioned to a marketplace model. The specialist quadrant, broken down by vertical, is where Iberian players show their depth: PcComponentes and Casa del Libro in tech, books and culture; Tradeinn and Bulevip in sports; PromoFarma and Carethy in parapharmacy; Aurgi in auto parts; Tiendanimal in pets; Wook in books; and a Portuguese pet retailer also appearing in the same axis.

A four-quadrant view of Spain and Portugal

The map's structural choices matter because they answer two questions that brands and agencies routinely confront when allocating budget across European markets: what does a marketplace sell, and where does it come from. The horizontal axis separates pure players, which exist only online, from retailers that have layered marketplace functionality on top of an existing physical or e-commerce footprint. The vertical axis separates generalists, which carry broad inventories across multiple categories, from specialists, which focus on a single vertical or use case.

According to Gmelch's accompanying commentary, "Amazon, AliExpress, Temu, Miravia dominate the generalist pure-player side." The same commentary notes that "Iberian players are especially strong in verticals and specific use cases", listing Wallapop, Milanuncios, KuantoKusta, Tradeinn, PromoFarma by DocMorris, PcComponentes, Tiendanimal and SPRINTER as examples. On the retailer side, the post observes that "retailer marketplaces are growing, but the landscape is less dense than in France", with El Corte Ingles, Worten Espana and Worten Portugal described as "crucial generalist e-commerce players in this region."

The fashion category cluster on the pure-player side carries Zalando, Spartoo, Veepee, Showroomprive and SHEIN. Tech and refurbished includes Back Market and Pixmania. C2C apparel - resale - features Vinted and Etsy. DIY and home is covered by ManoMano and Vente-unique. The retailer-specialist quadrant brings in MediaMarkt and Fnac for tech, Leroy Merlin and Brico Depot for DIY and garden, Maisons du Monde and Conforama for home, Kiabi for fashion, and Decathlon, Sprinter and Sport Zone for sports.

The conclusion drawn in the LinkedIn analysis is that "the real opportunity for brands is not to be 'everywhere', but to choose the right mix: generalists, category specialists, and trusted retailer marketplaces." For sellers, according to the same source, "Iberia is a layered marketplace ecosystem where category fit, local trust, pricing, logistics, and localisation matter a lot."

The Asian platforms are no longer adjacent. They are central

The map's most consequential observation is the position of Chinese-origin platforms inside the generalist quadrant. AliExpress, Temu and TikTok Shop sit alongside Amazon and eBay as pure-player generalists, and Miravia - launched in Spain in 2022 by Alibaba Group - appears in the same cluster despite explicitly positioning itself as a mid-to-high-end fashion, beauty and lifestyle destination.

This is not a peripheral phenomenon. Industry data has consistently shown that AliExpress has one of its strongest European penetrations in Spain, supported by warehousing and local seller programs. Temu, which entered the Spanish market in 2023, has pushed aggressively with low pricing, gamified shopping and free shipping promotions. TikTok Shop's entry into European markets in 2024 added a fourth Chinese-origin generalist to the cluster, this one integrated directly into the algorithmic content feed of the world's largest short-form video platform.

The competitive pressure these platforms exert on advertising auctions, retail media inventory and consumer attention has been documented across multiple PPC Land reports. AI-generated reviews on Temu surged 1361% between 2022 and 2025, while Shein recorded a 1569% increase between 2018 and 2024, according to Originality.ai detection analysis. The volumes involved are not marginal: data from the U.S. Congress cited in earlier coverage indicated that Temu and Shein collectively ship approximately 600,000 packages to the United States daily, a figure that gives some sense of the parcel volumes flowing into European markets as well.

Regulatory scrutiny is mounting in parallel. The European privacy advocacy group noyb filed formal complaints against six major Chinese technology companies on January 16, 2025, including TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN and Temu, targeting their data transfer practices. The complaints were submitted to data protection authorities in Austria, Belgium, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands. According to documents filed at the time, Chinese laws grant authorities "unrestricted powers regarding access to data processed by Chinese companies", and the complaints argue that this regime is incompatible with the level of protection required under GDPR.

Retailer marketplaces and the El Corte Ingles question

The retailer side of the generalist axis - what the map calls "mass-market retailers gone marketplace" - is less densely populated than in France but contains three of Iberia's most recognisable retail brands. Carrefour Spain has brought its large-scale general retail logic into the marketplace category, opening its catalogue to third-party sellers. El Corte Ingles, founded in Madrid in 1940 and the largest department store chain in Spain, has built a marketplace that reflects its ambition of comprehensive category coverage. Worten is the leading generalist player in Portugal, with a footprint that began in consumer electronics and household appliances but now extends well beyond.

A comment under the original LinkedIn post made the observation, with reference to Worten, that the chain "might be one of the very few big retailers that went fully online, not having any physical stores anymore." The author corrected this directly: according to Gmelch, "Worten Portugal still has stores", a point easily verifiable on Google Maps. The exchange is small but instructive: even within the Iberian e-commerce industry, the operational status of major players is not always clearly understood, and the marketplace transition has accelerated faster than perceptions have updated.

The specialist retailer quadrant includes MediaMarkt and Fnac for tech, Casa del Libro and Wook for books and culture, Leroy Merlin and Brico Depot for DIY and garden, Kiabi for fashion, Maisons du Monde and Conforama for home, Aurgi for auto parts, Decathlon, Sprinter and Sport Zone for sports, and Tiendanimal for pets. The diversity of verticals here is the visible signature of a market that has been built bottom-up over decades, with strong category specialists earning consumer trust before opening their platforms to third-party sellers.

Why this matters for marketing investment in Iberia

Spain's digital advertising market closed 2025 at 6.211 billion euros, according to IAB Spain's annual Estudio de Inversion Publicitaria en Medios Digitales, representing 11.2% growth over 2024 and a 24.8% cumulative increase from 2023. Within that total, search remained the largest single category at 1.992 billion euros, programmatic investment reached 1.688 billion euros, and connected television posted the highest percentage growth of any segment at 48.4% to reach 174.9 million euros. The Spanish market is the fastest-growing in Western Europe by certain measures, and Portugal - included as a newcomer in IAB Europe's latest market coverage - is part of the same regional opportunity set.

Retail media sits at the structural intersection of the marketplace map and the advertising market. According to IAB Europe data, European retail media spending reached 13.7 billion euros in 2024, growing 21.1% over the previous year, and now represents approximately one-fifth of total digital advertising expenditure across European markets. Forecasts published by IAB Europe project retail media spending to reach 16.9 billion euros in 2025, 20.8 billion euros in 2026 and 24.9 billion euros in 2027 - figures that imply a doubling of investment within four years.

That growth is funded by budget reallocation. Display advertising represents the primary source of shifted budgets, with 55% of advertisers redirecting spending from traditional display formats toward retail media platforms. Linear television follows at 45%, and programmatic contributes 39% of reallocated budgets. For brands operating in Iberia, this means that decisions about which marketplaces to prioritise are no longer just commercial decisions - they are increasingly decisions about where advertising spend will go, since each marketplace operates its own retail media network with its own first-party data and inventory.

The IAB Spain 2026 trends report identified agentic AI as the dominant force reshaping Spanish digital advertising, with European regulatory frameworks facing mounting pressure for simplification. The same report developed with participation from 91 companies signalled fundamental shifts in how marketing professionals will plan campaigns, measure performance and navigate compliance throughout 2026.

The C2C and resale layer

A distinctive feature of the Iberian map is the strength of consumer-to-consumer and classifieds players. Wallapop and Milanuncios, both Iberian-born, appear in the generalist pure-player quadrant alongside the international giants. OLX, the international classifieds platform, completes the set. On the fashion-specific side, Vinted is the dominant European C2C resale platform, and the Lithuania-headquartered marketplace partnered with Rokt in August 2024 to enhance post-purchase advertising experiences through machine learning - a structural signal that resale platforms are now positioning themselves as advertising surfaces as well as transaction platforms.

The original LinkedIn post received a suggestion in the comments to add CustoJusto.pt, described by its managing partner Pedro Furtado as the "#2 generalist classifieds website in Portugal." The author acknowledged that CustoJusto.pt is mainly a classifieds and second-hand marketplace in Portugal with a strong C2C focus. Other commenters proposed additions including Glovo, Deporvillage (part of Sprinter), Druni, Primor, MiFarma (Atida), Hipercalzado, AquiMejor, Spacemall and Eroski Supermercado. According to Gmelch's responses, several of these will be incorporated into an updated version of the map.

A market shaped by category specialists

The persistent strength of vertical specialists is the structural feature most emphasised by the author. PcComponentes, founded in Spain in 2005, has become one of the most successful vertical-specific marketplaces in the country and now operates internationally as well. Tradeinn, headquartered in Spain, has built a major sports e-commerce presence across multiple sub-vertical brands. PromoFarma by DocMorris dominates the parapharmacy vertical. Tiendanimal serves the pet category. In Portugal, Worten covers electronics, Wook covers books and Aurgi covers auto parts.

The combined effect is that Iberian consumers have a relatively rich ecosystem of category-specific destinations, each with its own audience, its own first-party data set and its own advertising inventory. For brands accustomed to a France or Germany strategy built around a smaller number of larger generalist players, the Iberian map implies a more fragmented investment approach. The trade-off is that category specialists tend to deliver higher relevance and conversion - what the IAB Europe Sponsored Products framework describes as the digital equivalent of premium shelf placement.

The map's positioning of TikTok Shop in the generalist quadrant reflects the platform's rapid build-out of commerce capability across Europe since 2024. The platform integrates shopping directly into the algorithmic content feed, with creator-driven content and live shopping events providing the demand-generation layer. According to industry observations cited in earlier coverage, TikTok Shop has produced significant revenue per livestream for participating brands in markets where live commerce has matured, with figures of 40,000 to 50,000 dollars per livestream reported in industry observations.

What the map does not show

Several caveats apply to any single-frame view of a market this large. The map captures a snapshot of operating marketplaces but does not, on its face, indicate market share, traffic, gross merchandise value or seller economics. Amazon's dominance in unit volume and the search-traffic capture of platforms like AliExpress and SHEIN are not visible from the chart alone. Nor is the regulatory pressure currently applied to several of the platforms shown: Temu has been the subject of a Kentucky lawsuit over data collection practices, an INFORM Act enforcement action resulting in a 2 million dollar settlement with the FTC, and ongoing scrutiny under the EU Digital Services Act, where the platform recorded approximately 93.7 million average monthly active users in the EU during its November 2024 transparency reporting period.

The map also does not indicate which platforms are gaining and losing share. Amazon's strategic moves - including its July 2025 withdrawal from Google Shopping across the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany - have implications for how marketplace traffic flows are shifting away from the open web and toward platform-owned funnels. Meta's Marketplace expansion into AI features and collaborative shopping tools, announced on November 13, 2025, introduced collaborative buying functionality, AI-generated insights and partnerships with eBay and Poshmark - changes that do not directly appear on a static Iberia map but that affect how consumers in Spain and Portugal discover marketplace inventory.

For brands, agencies and platforms operating in the region, the map is best understood as a starting framework rather than a final answer. It documents who is in the market, sorted by structural type, but the underlying dynamics - regulatory pressure, advertising auction shifts, AI-driven content discovery, and the migration of budget into retail media networks operated by these very marketplaces - are moving rapidly enough that any static representation begins ageing the day it is published.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Adrian Gmelch, Director of Content Strategy and Communication at Lengow, an e-commerce automation platform headquartered in France. The map covers more than 40 marketplaces operating in Spain and Portugal, including international players such as Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, Temu, TikTok Shop, Zalando, SHEIN, Vinted and ManoMano, as well as Iberian-born platforms including Wallapop, Milanuncios, KuantoKusta, Tradeinn, PromoFarma by DocMorris, PcComponentes, Tiendanimal, El Corte Ingles, Worten, Casa del Libro, Wook and Aurgi.

What: A four-quadrant map of the Iberian e-commerce marketplace landscape in 2026, structured along two axes - generalist versus specialist, and pure player versus retailer. The map distinguishes Iberian-born marketplaces, shown enclosed, from foreign-origin marketplaces, shown without enclosure but included because they actively operate in the region. The framework documents the structural composition of the market without ranking individual platforms by share or revenue.

When: Published on LinkedIn in May 2026, with the post receiving 287 reactions, 16 comments and 9 reposts within days of publication. The map sits within a broader Lengow series that includes a comparable France map. The author indicated that an updated version will incorporate additional players suggested in the comments, including CustoJusto.pt, Glovo, Deporvillage, Druni, Primor, MiFarma, Hipercalzado, AquiMejor, Spacemall and Eroski Supermercado.

Where: Spain and Portugal, treated as a single Iberian e-commerce region. The map includes platforms operating in both countries (Amazon, Worten, El Corte Ingles, Carrefour, Decathlon) as well as country-specific players (Wook and KuantoKusta in Portugal, Milanuncios and PcComponentes in Spain). The map's geographic framing reflects the operational reality that many brands and sellers approach Iberia as a combined commercial unit rather than two separate national markets.

Why: The map matters for the marketing and advertising community because marketplace selection is increasingly fused with media strategy. Each marketplace operates its own retail media network, its own first-party data infrastructure and its own advertising inventory. According to IAB Europe, European retail media spending reached 13.7 billion euros in 2024 and is forecast to reach 28.8 billion euros by 2028. Spain's digital advertising market closed 2025 at 6.211 billion euros, with programmatic at 1.688 billion euros and search at 1.992 billion euros. For brands, agencies and platforms working in Iberia, decisions about which marketplaces to prioritise now carry direct implications for where advertising budget flows, which audiences can be reached with first-party data, and how exposure to Chinese platforms, regulatory pressure, and AI-driven content discovery is managed at portfolio level. The map provides a structural reference point against which those decisions can be made.

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