Bond to back women pharmacists in Spain

Under a sky yellowed by devastating forest fires, Dolores Lera Cuerva watched the summer visitors whose business is vital to her pharmacy flee Castrocalbón, her remote village in León. The fires in August “felt as though the whole world was burning,” she says, “and after the fires, it seemed like the whole world was gone.”

Dolores started working at the two-person pharmacy in 1995. After buying the pharmacy in 2023, the fires hit her hard and threatened to make life difficult for the 900 locals, many of them elderly and infirm, who rely on her. “I take their medicines to their houses,” she says. “They are like my family. I know their kitchens and they know mine.”

When the flames receded, the economic damage lingered. Tourism dried up, bills piled high, and the future looked bleak. A loan from CBNK, a Spanish bank that lends to engineering and health professionals, kept her afloat. “Without the loan, I just couldn’t pay the bills,” she says. “The future would have been very stressful. Now we have hope that we can keep going until everything recovers.”

Dolores’s story is part of a wider effort to strengthen women-owned businesses in Spain’s pharmacy sector. In March, the European Investment Bank purchased a €150 million covered bond issued by CBNK. This is the first intermediated financing programme in the EU exclusively dedicated to women entrepreneurs. The proceeds of this bond are being used to lend an average of €450 000 to about 330 pharmacies owned by women or employing a majority of women. The initiative could ultimately benefit up to 600 pharmacies across Spain.

Despite making up the majority of the workforce in the pharmacy sector, women still face barriers such as limited access to finance, wage gaps, and underrepresentation in leadership positions. The European Investment Bank’s bond purchase aims to change that by supporting CBNK’s tailored financial support for women entrepreneurs and business leaders, enabling them to scale their businesses and contribute to Spain’s economic growth.

“This shows that the capital markets union has a social purpose, as well as a financial one,” says Saiyi Suzuki Navarro, the European Investment Bank loan officer who worked on the deal.

Covered bonds are a secure way for banks to raise funds. They are backed by a pool of loans—in this case, loans to pharmacies—and give investors confidence that their money is protected. By purchasing the bond, the European Investment Bank enables CBNK to channel funds to women entrepreneurs who might struggle to access other financing.

For CBNK, the deal with the European Union’s financing arm opens doors to capital markets that might otherwise be closed to a relatively small institution. “This partnership with the EIB has made us far more competitive,” says CBNK Chief Executive Enrique Serra González. “It combines public and private financing to deliver tangible social impact.”

The initiative is part of the European Investment Bank’s broader commitment to gender equality and regional development. Pharmacies in rural areas like Castrocalbón are lifelines for communities, especially for older residents who depend on local services. Supporting these businesses means supporting health, resilience, and social cohesion.

CBNK and the European Investment Bank signed the deal in March at the launch of the Gender Finance Lab, a European Investment Bank-led advisory initiative funded by the European Commission under the InvestEU Advisory Hub. Its goal is to create a community of commercial banks committed to boosting women’s entrepreneurship and contributing to inclusive economic growth across the European Union.