Miguel Navascués | The winner of the recent elections, Pedro Sánchez, defined his objective in the previous debates with great precision: to end the increasing inequality in Spain. But inequality is not the main problem in Spain, it does not even have the nature of a problem. To begin, it is not increasing.
Joan Tapia ( Barcelona) | The Spanish economy is doing somewhat better than expected, but both the slowdown and the extent to which governability depends on Podemos are worrying. We have spent weeks talking about the slowdown, but in the end GDP growth for the first quarter was 0.7%, compared to 0.6% in the last quarter of 2018 and 0.5% in the quarter before that.
Shaun Riordan | If Spain wants to take advantage of the opportunities it must develop real foreign and European policies. It is a shame that none of this was discussed in the election campaign.
Bankinter | Three pieces of positive macro data on the Spanish economy: GDP grew in the first quarter of 2019 by +2.4% yoy compared to the +2.3% expected and +2.3% in the previous quarter. In inter-quarterly rate accelerated unexpectedly to +0.7% from +0.6% in Q42018. Both are double that of the Eurozone and the 28.
European markets face an intense week, in which politics (in the case of Spain), macroeconomics and company data will come into play, deciding the tendency of indices.
Shaun Riordan | British (and foreign journalism in general) would do better to forget the obsession with their civil war narratives and focus on the economic, social and political issues confronting modern Spain. Explaining Spain´s electoral results in terms of the Civil War is no more relevant than explaining the Brexit vote in terms of the Battle of Britain, and just as misleading.
Juan Luis Manfredi via The Conversation | Election results in Spain leave a new normality to which we will have to get used.
Spain held its third national election since 2015 on Sunday. The socialist party won by a clear margin but fell short of an absolute majority in the national Parliament and will need to find coalition partners to form a government. “We will not put a sanitary cordon to anybody. Our only condition will be to respect the Constitution and advance in social justice,” PM Pedro Sánchez said.
Alvise Lennkh & Dennis Shen (Scope Ratings) | Political events in Spain (undecided), Portugal (stable) and Italy (divided) have implications for the three countries, visible in their divergent capacity to reduced the high levels of public debt.
Shaun Riordan | The other oddity of the debate was the almost complete absence of policy. Many commentators have already noted the absence of economic policy from the election campaign. Last night there was no mention of health or the key issue of further reform of the labour market.