According to the Monthly Foreign Trade Report published by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Enterprise, Spain’s trade deficit widened to €5.172 billion in April, compared to €3.900 billion recorded in the same month of the previous year, as imports continued to outpace exports. In April, imports increased by 8.7% year-on-year to €39.600 billion, driven by an increase in purchases of energy products (32.2%), mainly originating from Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the…
Analysis by Natixis CIB In 2025, the eurozone experienced a slowdown in wage growth (both nominal and real), which reduced households’ purchasing power and limited their consumption capacity. According to our wage decomposition model, this slowdown in the eurozone masks highly divergent national realities. In Germany and Spain, wage growth remained robust, whilst in France and Italy there was a more pronounced slowdown. These contrasting trends call for an analysis…
Reported by Alvise Lennkh-Yunus Long-term climate risks at the sovereign level are highly country-specific and depend on the scenario. Furthermore, forecasts point to a wide range of possible outcomes that reflect the uncertainty inherent in climate scenarios. In a recent study, Scope Ratings has estimated the economic impact of climate risks over a 30-year time horizon for EU countries and selected G20 sovereign issuers, arising from chronic physical risk, acute…
Public administration debt reached €1.736 trillion at the end of April, following a year-on-year increase of 4.4%, according to data from the Bank of Spain (BdE). Nevertheless, its ratio to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell to 101%, representing a 1.6 percentage point decrease compared to the same period last year. In absolute terms, the volume of debt increased by 4.4% compared to April 2025. However, it decreased slightly by 0.2%…
Neither rent caps, nor rental bonuses for young people, nor ICO guarantees, nor limitations on tourist apartments, nor extraordinary protection against non-payments are effective measures to address the housing crisis facing Spain. This is what the Bank of Spain points out in its 2025 Annual Report published yesterday. The Bank of Spain estimates the housing deficit at 750,000 homes, which is strangling the Spanish economy and preventing young people from…
The president of the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (CEOE), Antonio Garamendi, pointed out this Wednesday that Spain is suffering from an “institutional drift” in which decision-makers are “more focused on their electoral and ideological interests.” He also criticized the Ministry of Labor for subjecting companies to “regulatory suffocation.” In this regard, during his speech at the CEOE general assembly held this Wednesday in Madrid, he noted that while the…
Approximately 1.6 million workers miss work every single day. This means that around 7% of Spain’s employed population is absent from their jobs daily. The majority of these absences are justified, according to data provided by the employers’ association CEOE: 1.4 million of them are accompanied by a temporary disability leave (IT, by its Spanish acronym)—what we commonly call medical leave. According to the association, the expenditure on benefits and…
Spanish investment funds achieved an average return of 1.78% in May and 7.68% over the past 12 months, with assets under management increasing by €9.7 billion. Jefferies Analysis May saw another strong performance, with assets under management (AUM) in Spain rising by 2.1% month-on-month, representing an increase of €9.7 billion, mainly due to positive market effects (1.78%), driven by modest fund inflows (€1.9 billion). In the current environment, investors continued…
Manuel Enrich, chairman of AERI (Spanish Association for Investor Relations), maintains that “the Spanish stock market has only been at all-time highs for a few months; I believe it remains undervalued.” Are we facing a solid cycle for the Spanish stock market? The Spanish stock market is highly correlated with the major international indices, which is simultaneously a strength and a vulnerability. Based on valuations, the cycle strikes me as…
The OECD estimates that 27.4% of jobs in Spain are potentially at risk of task automation — a figure slightly higher than the OECD average (26%) — although the proportion of jobs at high risk of actual automation remains much lower, standing at 5.9%. By Francisco Rodríguez Fernández According to the article by Francisco Rodríguez Fernández, director of the Funcas Finance and Technology Observatory, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Labour Market…