President Rajoy loves to say that Spain is the country with more GDP and employment growth in the EU. And, of course, he is right. When the PP took office in December 2011, unemployment was increasing at a rate of 7.9 per cent a year. Now, four years later, as the PP’s leader has recalled, ‘it’s dropping at an annual rate of 8 per cent.’ But the most common concern for foreign analysts is the low quality of the jobs being created in Spain.

If Spain wants to continue to be one of the leaders in the global economy, it has to persevere with reforms in areas such as the labour market, education, and the university system. For example, in the last 40 years, Spain has had an average jobless rate of 16%, some 10 percentage points higher than that of our main partners.

BARCLAYS | Santander was just above breakeven in the quarter due to one offs and underlying earnings 25% light as a result of higher provisions and weaker costs.  Negative one offs of €1,435m include €600m for PPI and €683m for intangible asset write offs. Even before this Santander’s Q4 earnings were 24% below expectations mainly due to higher provisions but also costs.

In December, the number of jobless in Spain fell by 55,790 people, bringing the total number of unemployed for the full-year to 4.039 million. So the government’s hopes that the jobless number would fall below 4 million in 2015 were dashed. And those who were expecting a significant slowdown in the labour market in the second part of the year, after the strong rise in the first half, were proven wrong.