The AVE high-speed train has undoubtedly been one of Spain’s big success stories and very positive for its international image. Spain is not just the European country with the most high speed lines (2,900 km), in front of the pioneer (France), with 2,000, but it has also reached these levels in a little over 30 years. France took 30.
Julio Rodríguez | The economic recovery continues to boost a market which has seen prices rise 10.8% in the last three years. But this dynamism contrasts with the problems for accessing the housing market which young aspiring home owners are experiencing. A more energetic government policy is required to establish a pool of homes for rent and strengthen the creation of social housing.
The Bank of Spain warns that the Spanish economy is progressing against a backdrop of “high uncertainty” at the start of 2017, along the lines of what happened during most of last year, associated to a large extent with geopolitical events.
Latest reports on trade union affiliation are enough to push the top echelons of Spain’s big unions to the edge. The information available says union affiliation in Spain is at a four-decade minimum level and one of the lowest in Europe.
The Spanish economy grew at a rate of 3.2% in 2016, although signs of a slowdown are beginning to appear. Almost all the external factors which had boosted GDP growth latterly (the so-called tail winds) may disappear over this year.
On January 25, the rise in the wholesale price of electricity in Spain exceeded 100 euros per megawatt-hour, its record level. For many years, how electricity prices in Spain have been established has been a total nonsense, since the electricity pool functions like a marginal market. A division of the Supreme Court has decided to start proceedings to find out what the reasons are for the successive increases in electricity bills.
Everything seems to indicate that the Bank of Spain inspectors, one of the biggest elitist groups in Spain, feared even by the most powerful bankers, are not currently in a good place. The blame lies in the fact that the ECB, or rather the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), has taken over the function of banking supervision. This has left the inspectors somewhat bereft of functions, workload and influence.
Fernando Rodríguez | Next Banco Popular’s chairman Emilio Saracho is scheduled by end-February. People are waiting to see what his initiatives will be. Saracho is a deacon of coporate banking in Spain. Much is expected from him.
The Industry Minister is preparing a new renewable energy auction for the end of March. It plans to invite tenders for 3,000 technology neutral MW. This will try to avoid some of the mistakes made in the previous one at the start of 2016. Furthermore, it is another boost for these technologies to comply with the EU directive of fulfilling at least 20% of its total energy needs with renewables by 2020.
The January update of the IMF’s “World Economic Outlook”, published in October, confirms that Spain will recover this year all the GDP growth lost during the economic crisis, exceeding in 2017 for the first time the volume of growth in 2008.