SpainScore rankings · Updated July 2026
Spain's regions with the shortest healthcare waits
Public-health surgical waiting lists by comunidad autónoma — the cleanest English rendering of Spain's own SISLE data.
How we ranked this
We ranked Spain's autonomous communities by their public-health surgical waiting list — the average wait for scheduled surgery — using the Health Ministry's own SISLE figures. Shorter is better; the national average is shown for context.
- Data INE census (population, origins), AEMET climate normals, regional PISA scores, and the Health Ministry's SISLE waiting lists — each town compared against the Spanish average.
- Reproducible Re-run the SISLE data yourself and you get this order — no opinion in it.
- What we don't score This is the public (SNS) system's average surgical wait by region — it does not capture private-insurance speed, a specific hospital's performance, or non-surgical specialties beyond first consultations.
The ranking
Spain's regions average about 103 days for scheduled surgery on the public system — but the spread is enormous. Shortest waits first:
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50-day average surgical wait — 51% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~68 days.
Honest tradeoff: 0.8% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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64-day average surgical wait — 38% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~49 days.
Honest tradeoff: 2.3% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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73-day average surgical wait — 29% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~63 days.
Honest tradeoff: 5.7% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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78-day average surgical wait — 24% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~32 days.
Honest tradeoff: 6.4% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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87-day average surgical wait — 16% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~102 days.
Honest tradeoff: 13.8% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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88-day average surgical wait — 15% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~95 days.
Honest tradeoff: 16.1% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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91-day average surgical wait — 12% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~103 days.
Honest tradeoff: 10.4% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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92-day average surgical wait — 11% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~64 days.
Honest tradeoff: 16.5% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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96-day average surgical wait — 7% below the national average. First specialist consultation ~152 days.
Honest tradeoff: 16.7% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
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103-day average surgical wait — about the national average. First specialist consultation ~89 days.
Honest tradeoff: 19.3% of surgical patients still wait over six months.
Source: Ministerio de Sanidad, Sistema de Información sobre Listas de Espera (SISLE). Public-system (SNS) figures only.
Questions
Which region of Spain has the shortest healthcare waiting times?
On the Ministry of Health's SISLE data, the Basque Country, Madrid and Galicia consistently report the shortest average surgical waits, while Andalucía, Catalonia and the Canary Islands are among the longest. The full ranking with day counts is above.
Do these waits apply to private healthcare in Spain?
No. These are public-system (Sistema Nacional de Salud) figures. Private insurance — common among foreign residents — generally bypasses these lists, so treat this as a public-system comparison, not the whole picture.
This ranks regions, not your own priorities
Get your ranking, not this one →
This list scores one representative persona. Answer a dozen honest questions and we score all 8,132 municipalities against your priorities — climate, cost, healthcare, community, getting home — with the tradeoffs shown as plainly as the wins.
Take the 3-minute quiz →Updated July 2026. Re-generated from the SpainScore dataset on each data release — the ranking is reproducible, not editorial.