Sánchez’s PSOE has insisted on cordon sanitaire not only with the far-right Vox, but even with the right-wing PP, with which it has refused to agree anything, while explaining the benefits of granting amnesty to the perpetrators of the attempted coup in Catalonia, of negotiating with the heirs of ETA, and with the populists of Podemos. Something that is incomprehensible to the vast majority of the electorate, even on the…
Fernando González Urbaneja| The government’s official discourse is unequivocal: Spain is doing well, the economy is doing very well. Vice-president Calviño comes out insistently with the concept of “leadership” to illustrate every decision of the government in economic and social matters. Gender parity means leadership; the Iberian exception is leadership; the growth of employment and GDP means leadership and so on and so forth. According to the government, Spain is…
The last year has seen the biggest population growth in 14 years, but it is all due to immigration. Residents with Spanish nationality have fallen by 13,000 and those born in Spain by 101,000. Spain has experienced in the last year the highest population growth in the last 14 years, with nearly 600,000 more inhabitants at the end of this first quarter than at the same time in 2022. As…
Jakob Suwalski (Scope Ratings | France and Spain have enacted pension reforms this year to put their pension systems on a sounder financial footing and boost employment, but doubts remain about their long-term sustainability and impact on the economy, given their similar demographic trends. The content of the reforms is also different. France (AA/Stable) aims to rebalance its pension system by raising the statutory retirement age from 62 to 64…
According to the Bank of Spain (BdE), the debt of Spain’s public administrations as a whole increased by 1% in March compared to February, reaching a record high of €1.535 trillion, bringing it to 113% of GDP (113.2% at the end of 2022) – the BdE uses the nominal GDP of the last four quarters for this calculation. In the last 12 months, Spain’s public debt has grown by 5.6%…
Minister José Luis Escrivá’s recent pension reform will leave a public deficit of up to €22,000 million in the public coffers in 2023 alone, with its consequent negative effects on employment, growth and the competitiveness of the Spanish economy. This is what is stated in the latest report by the Institute of Economic Studies (IEE in its Spanish initials), which, under the title “La subida de las cotizaciones sociales (The…
José Luis Escrivá will go down in history as the minister whose trade unions called the first ever strike in the history of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. Staff shortages, delays in appointments and in the recognition of benefits, the closure of offices, and non-compliance with the agreements signed with the trade unions. For all these reasons, the trade unions CSIF and CC.OO. have called partial strikes…
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…