The three main Spanish electricity companies (Endesa, Iberdrola and Naturgy) have reached agreement in principle with the Ministry of Ecological Transition to close the nuclear plants in Spain. In this way, the closure of the active plants would be scaled, so that they would close their operations gradually between 2025 and 2035.

Juan Carlos Martínez Lázaro in The Conversation | The 2019 budget is very well designed from a political point of view, as it is a tool for prolonging the legislature. More questionable is that this budget will be a tool for “driving productivity and strengthening solid growth”. Many more things would be needed to transform the Spanish productive model which, although it hurts us, remains the same as what we had before the crisis.

Miguel Navascués | The perception only that pensioners and health spending have lost purchasing power in Spain is not altogether true. We can see this in the data.The UK has a level of public spending per capita only 3% higher, the US 13% and Spain 15% (excluding interest).

The Spanish economy capacity for financing abroad has contracted in annual terms to 2015 lows, points Bankia Estudios, in the process undermining the process of deleveraging when global indebtedness still remains at excessive levels.In the case of households, even if disposable income has seen a big increase as a result of the recovery in wages, the greater rhythm in consumption has led to a new fall in savings.

The rate of Spanish donors is the highest in the world, and its transplant system the best. In the last five years Spain has registered the greatest increase in donors since 1989, achieving in 2018 a rate of 48 donors for every million inhabitants, 2,243 in total, and for the 27th consecutive being the world leader in donations and transplants, according to the latest balance of activity from the National Transplant Organisation (ONT), presented this week by the Ministry of Health.

The political instability is not just a Spanish phenomenon. We are far from the climate of the thirties in the 20th century, but the increase in nationalist populism is worrying. 2019 is replete with uncertainties, but it is also true that unemployment in the European Union has fallen below 8% for the first time since the crisis and that in Spain the number of people affiliated with Social Security has recovered pre-2008 levels.

The Spanish Government will not prolong the useful life of any of the nuclear plants in Spain beyond 40 years, so that it will prioritise the closure of plants of this period. To incentivise the closure of these plants, it has proposed giving the owners more fiscal advantages when obtaining permits for developing renewable energy.