Growing per capita income, stagnant in the last 15 years, and reducing public debt, located at 1.541 trillion euros, are the two major subjects that the new government must approve. These will be his duties, whether he turns out to be a left-wing executive, as the CIS predicts, or right-wing, as the rest of the opinion polls predict.
Two structural problems that have been getting worse since the 2008 crisis broke out. To a large extent it has been due to the chain of recessions in the last three decades with governments of the PSOE (José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Pedro Sánchez) and the PP (Mariano Rajoy). It has also influenced the abandonment of the liberalizing policies that until now had been the ones that had allowed us to get closer to Europe.
In 1959, when Franco was forced to start the Stabilization Plan, Spain was 32% poorer than the European average. That reformist impulse put an end to the Falangist autarky and the economy was opened to foreign investment and competition. The result was a great leap forward. Then came the second economic impulse in 1982 from the hand of the socialists during the 14-year government of Felipe González. And the third big push came in 1996 with the governments of José María Aznar and Spain’s entry into the euro.
Three reformist processes that allowed us to converge with Europe and stay only 8 points away from the average European per capita income. This is what is known as the “Spanish economic miracle”.
However, since then we have regressed like crabs while our partners have continued to grow. We are now 15 points behind the EU average. We have gone from position 9 to 17 of the richest countries. The countries of the East that are growing more are passing us by, because they produce more and better than the Spanish.
According to the World Bank, Spain’s per capita GDP at the end of 2022 amounted to $29,350. In 2008, however, that number stood at $35,511. Nothing less than 6,161 dollars less per inhabitant.
We have spent 27 years without making reforms. Neither the governments of Zapatero, nor those of Rajoy, nor even less those of Sánchez have liberalized the economy. Productivity has plummeted; teaching has degraded to mind-boggling limits; young people have been forgotten, and unemployment has turned us into the red lantern of Europe.
And meanwhile we have lived on borrowed time. The public deficit has not stopped growing and we are one of the most indebted countries in the world. Only in the five years of Pedro Sánchez’s government the public debt has grown by 376,000 million. They argue that the cause is the three crises –financial, pandemic and war–, but they forget to mention that the rest of the European countries have also suffered them and have not stopped growing or controlling their expenses.
The problem is that the open bar has run out. The ECB has stopped buying our debt and the interest generated will be paid more and more. Europe increasingly demands more austerity and this pressure will be greater from June 9, 2024 if the conservatives win the European elections.
One thing is clear and that is that, in order to face the pending duties, the next government will have to put an end to the current political tension and mend the broken bridges. It will not be possible to start a new reformist cycle of the economy with a weak government and mortgaged by radical minorities. Consensus and will to reform is what our economy really needs to prevent the gap with Europe from continuing to grow.
