Difficult to make a direct comparison, but taxes are very similar to Germany, salaries are pretty much the same for white-collar IT work. But IT is not terribly well-paid in Germany to begin with. I've seen people earning 3k per month in a senior IT position for a bank. But the same money goes a lot longer in Spain, especially outside big cities. The sweet spot is to freelance for foreign companies and spend the money in Spain. What skews the comparison is Spain is surprisingly empty. 70% of the country the same population density as northern Sweden. But a lot of people live in these small remote places where there are basically no permanent jobs apart from odd jobs, fruit picking and working in the post office. Think of a remote US mining town, without the mining :)