Acting as an “agent provocateur”, Catalonia’s government intends to hold a wholly biased and unrepresentative independence referendum in early October. It knows the outturn will hardly attain half of the potential voters, as only a minority of the population favours an outright split from Spain.
Excepting the high speed trains involving the so famous La Meca-Medina contract in Arabia Saudi, and despite authorities and the industry itself have been trying for decades, Spain has been unable to sign even a single high-speed sales operation. This is not, however, the official discourse of any of them.
The new 5 billion euros highway investment plan, which includes the collaboration of private capital, presented today by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will go some way to rectifying the slump in public works tenders which has continued over the last few months.
According to the National Statistics Institute, the most normal average annual gross salary is around 16.500 euros. So once this has been paid 14 times a year and taxes and Social Security contributions have been deducted, this ends up as a little over 800 euros net per month. This sort of income will never drive consumption or housing sales and is not adequate for a European economy like Spain’s.
J.L. M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | The Spanish banks have made a big effort over the last few years to provide solutions for more than a million households experiencing difficulties in meeting their mortgages repayments. We estimate that over 10% of current existing mortgages have been refinanced or restructured.
Spain may not be the most common point of entry for most migrants and refugees to Europe – last year it received only two percent of arrivals – but it does seem to be facing increasing challenges in this area. Cities like Málaga and Tarifa, on the south coast, are currently struggling to manage arrivals, which so far this year have doubled those of the equivalent period in 2016.
Last week the Spanish government announced an offer of nearly 20,000 jobs in the public sector. The offer consists of: 10,318 free entrance posts in the General State Administration and the Justice Administration, as well as a further 5,350 internal promotion posts. There is also a one-time offer of public sector employment involving 4,285 newly created jobs in priority sectors where there is a “deficit” like the Inland Revenue Office, Social Security, Work Inspection and National Identity Document and National Traffic offices.
The Basque region-based industries, like the automotive and aerospace, are global and cutting hedge. They export between 70% and 90% of their production, achieving surpluses for the region’s trade balance, of some 5 billion euros in one of the last few years.
If you’ve had trouble hailing a cab on the streets of Madrid, Barcelona or many other cities in Spain recently, there’s a good chance it was because of a taxi drivers’ strike. There have been a number of these in recent months, all with the same aim: to halt the expansion of ride-sharing firm Uber.
This week Spain ratified its free trade agreement with Canada, known as CETA (Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) in spite of the suprising abstention of PSOE. Spain’s trade relations with Canada date back to the XVI century.