I am the first one to say that we need to change the level of importance that tourism has in our economy, but the proportionate importance. Not get rid of the industry all together.
In Spain, there has been a kind of urban legend that IPOs don’t work and investors end up losing money. This has possibly been the case in the past, but not now. And perhaps this is because most of the current IPOs are almost exclusively aimed at institutional investors, so operations need to be more fine-tuned.
Spain is well on track for another record tourism year after welcoming 36.3 million tourists in the first half of 2017, a 11.6% increase from a year earlier, according to the Tourist Movement on Borders (Frontur) survey, released by the National Statistics Institute.
Spanish labour market hits a new record: less than four million jobless people for the first time since 2008, according to Q2 Labour Force Survey. Figures of unemployment dropped by 340.000 between April and June to 3,914,300 people, therefore reaching a rate of 17.22%. Employment grows by 375,000 new jobs; working population increases to 18.81 millions.
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.