On the left, Pedro Sánchez promises “93,000 affordable homes for young people and families” at a rally in Toledo on 21 April. On the right, at a rally in A Coruña, a week later, on 28 April, he was already promising 183,000 homes at affordable prices for… And with weeks of election campaigning left.
Fernando González Urbaneja| The government has not shied away from criticising employers for their labour management and for allegedly poor relations with unions and workers. They say that the beam in your own eye is less obvious than the speck in someone else’s. On labour relations, the government has little to boast of; its performance is abysmal, and the consequences for the customers of public services and for citizens are…
The Council of Ministers has given Vivendi, Prisa’s second-largest stakeholder with a 9.94% holding, permission to convert all of its convertible subordinated debentures, increasing its ownership position in the company’s capital. The total amount of the issue was €130 million and the first conversion period started on 1 May and will end on the tenth. Vivendi’s conversion of the subscribed bonds will result, in the final scenario of a full…
The Government has just signed a new bilateral agreement with the United States for the deployment of two new US Navy ships at the Rota Naval Base. This new agreement comes on the eve of Pedro Sánchez’s visit to the White House on Friday 12 May, where he will meet with President Joe Biden. It was the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, who signed the agreement together with the US…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Employers and unions have reached an income policy agreement on their own which is coherent with the previous ones signed during the last decades. There is no break in the social pact policy that accompanied Spanish democracy for decades. The agreement (a salary increase of 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024) is indicative, a recommendation for decentralized collective bargaining, thousands of sector, province, company agreements……
Funcas | The growing imbalance in the size of the older and younger generations poses a challenge for intergenerational solidarity, with important implications at the economic, social and political levels. Spain is a good example of this demographic trend. While in 2012 the population aged 65 and over accounted for 17.4% of the population, by 2022 already exceeded 20%. In contrast, the population under 20 years of age fell to…
The total number of people employed in the Spanish agricultural sector at the end of the first quarter was 748,200, compared to 827,700 in the first quarter of 2022. Nearly 80,000 fewer employed than a year ago. This is the largest annual fall in a first quarter since 2015, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute’s Labour Force Survey (EPA). You have to go back to the first quarter of…
Bankinter : Preliminary Q1 2023 GDP +3.8% year-on-year (versus +3.1% expected and +2.9% year-on-year in Q4 2022 revised up by 0.3 percentage points. Quarter-on-quarter GDP growth of +0.5% (versus +0.3% quarter-on-quarter estimated and +0.4% quarter-on-quarter foreseen revised up two tenths). The implicit GDP deflator stands at +6.2% year-on-year (+1.1 p.p. versus the last quarter). The analysis team’s view: it has been a stronger start to 2023 than was expected. Manufacturing…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The EPA for the first quarter of 2023 allows for different readings to suit all readers’ tastes. Employment fell slightly compared with the previous quarter, but grew by 370,000 compared with the previous year. Therefore, a certain slowdown in job creation, but with a target figure of 20.45 million employed, the highest figure in history. Compared with the previous quarter and the previous year, the data…
The reform of fiscal rules proposed by the European Commission will prohibit public spending from growing above GDP in countries with more than 60% debt or 3% deficit, which will have to present consolidation plans four to seven years ahead. Europe already has the new rules of the budgetary game proposed by Brussels on the table. After years of suspending deficit and debt targets to allow EU partners to fight…