Luis Alcaide, Author at The Corner

Articles by Luis Alcaide

Luis Alcaide

Luis Alcaide works as an economist for the Spanish government since 1961. He has been state adviser in the European Union and Bank of Spain director of communications. Alcaide published editorial articles in Spain's leading newspaper El País between 1977 and 1983, and in Diario 16 between 1985 and 1988. He regularly contributes to Economía Exterior and Política Exterior. He's founder member of Grupo Consejeros.

Spanish Politics 9th May 2022

Espionage By The CNI And The Dealings Between Catalan Nationalists And Putin’s Collaborators

Luis Alcaide | Espionage and misunderstandings between Catalan supporters of Esquerra and Spanish supporters of the PSOE. The Spanish state, like any other, is doing its duty in the face of possible aggressions against its integrity and the liberty of its citizens. The director of the CNI, Paz Esteban, explains herself in the Congress of Deputies. The pro-independence parties and the most left-wing leftists do not quite accept the arguments…

Spanish economy 13th April 2022

Feijóo’s Tax Cuts In Times Of Inflation, A Credible Alternative

Luis Alcaide | In the wake of his meeting with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the main opposition candidate Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, recently elected president of the Partido Popular, complained that he had not been heard on his proposals on taxation: a reduction in personal income tax for taxpayers with lower incomes in order to compensate for the greater frequency of the effects of inflation. This is neither a pro-vo¬lu¬tionary nor…

Spanish economy 21st March 2022

China Becomes Spain’s Leading Supplier

Luis Alcaide (Capital Madrid) | The current account balance of payments recorded a surplus of 8.428 billion euros in 2021, when exports grew by 21% and imports by 24%, with China as the leading supplier (11.9% of our imports vs. 9.6% for Germany and 9.1% for France). In the face of the avalanche of unquieting news, Spain’s political and economic health in the first months of this year 2022 and…

Relevant News Item 28th February 2022

Putin Returns To Brezhnev’s Interventionist Doctrine

Luis Alcaide | Early morning of 26 February 2022. Invasion of Russian troops. I don’t know whether I’m in Madrid or in the Bucharest of that morning on 21 August 1968. At that time, 170,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers were invading Czechoslovakia, and the Prague Spring was a political and economic threat to the communist bloc. Czechoslovakia, which was a developed pre-World War II society and economy, offered in 1968 economic…

Spanish economy 11th February 2022

Wealth Tax: Spain Ready To Shoot Itself In The Foot

Luis Alcaide | In most European states the wealth tax has been abolished. Only France has kept it for the taxpayer, but without physically suffocating the taxpayer. Another thing is the municipal taxes on property tenure, which exist almost everywhere in the world. The latter are key to local budgets, based on the occupation of a municipal space and in return for the services of police and real estate surveillance,…

Spanish economy 21st January 2022

The Spanish Economy Relies On The Export Boom To Keep Its Activity Alive

Luis Alcaide | The evolution of Spain’s export trade confirms the viability of the economy, whose rhythm is being maintained thanks to its strong export sector. Political labyrinths aside, according to the latest available data for the month of November, the increase in sales of Spanish goods to foreign markets exceeds the average increase in the EU, as well as that of the main European competitors. The number of exporters…

European economy 28th December 2021

We Need Recovery And Growth

Luis Alcaide | In the Romanised Spain of the first two centuries, the so-called Silver Age, an Aragonese, Quintilian, whom his countryman Martial would call “summus mo¬de¬rator juven¬tae”, called for “men of talent, capable of living in a cordial world and participating in public affairs”. Centuries later, in a Spain that was already moving towards modernity, the poet of the upper classes, Campoamor, described those men of talent as “a…

European economy 21st December 2021

From Brexit To Tax Haven

Luis Alcaide | A British parliamentary spokesman and former development minister, Andrew Mitchell, has declared it in no uncertain terms: “The UK is losing its reputation as a credible jurisdiction. Our (British) companies have become vehicles for the laundering of money. The vulgarity of the internal market, the weakness of regulations and the pathetic response to organised crime are being used to facilitate all kinds of misdemeanours. Many EU Europeans…

European economy 26th November 2021

The Draghi-Macron Pact Aims To Counter Any Deviation Of The New German Coalition

Luis Alcaide | Angela Merkel’s departure from the German chancellery raises the question of the attitude of the Symaphoric coalition (Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals) towards the European integration process. In the meantime, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and French President Emmanuel Macron signed an extensive bilateral agreement in Rome (60 pages, including both foreign policy and defence policy and a series of concrete economic agreements). This strengthens the role…

Spanish economy 23rd November 2021

Foreign Trade Saves The Spanish Economy

In September 2021, Spanish exports grew by 21.9% year-on-year to 28.337 billion euros, a record for the last decade. The figure exceeds by 5 billion euros the peak in sales to the rest of the world recorded in September 2019. In turn, imports also show the highest figure since 2012, with a year-on-year increase of 24.2% to 30.730 billion euros. An increase that is not unrelated to the price of…

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Articles by Luis Alcaide

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