The growth of the Spanish photovoltaic (PV) sector in the period 2004-2008 rendered Spain a prominent place among top worldwide countries. Yet, this growth was rather uneven across the different Spanish regions which raised the interest on the drivers ultimately effecting these disparities. Especially controversial were the arguments about the influence of the administrative procedure and the landscape policy on the development of GCPVS on-floor. This study therefore discloses both two elements and evaluates their impact in a group of PV prominent Spanish regions and Catalonia, the latter used as a benchmark because of its comprehensive and stringent regulation on landscape protection, which was accused by the PV industry of thwarting the development of the GCPVS on-floor. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out. In particular two indexes were elaborated to determine the consistency of the arguments pointing to the landscape protection policy as a decisive barrier to GCPVS growth. First, when the analysis is made in relative terms, the ranking of PV prominent regions changes and many of the differences vanish. Second, rather than the preeminence of a landscape protection policy what really matters for GCPVS on-floor growth is the administrative procedure and the processing enabling its implementation. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.