Denying the reality of the economic situation for electoral purposes, in addition to being irresponsible, entails a serious risk that citizens and businesses end up paying. Unfortunately, we Spaniards already have a shameful background. The former socialist president, Rodríguez Zapatero , and his minister of Economy, Pedro Solbes , denied in the 2007 campaign that our country was exposed to the mortgage crisis that had begun in the US and did not hesitate to talk about "green shoots" and affirm that Spain played in "the Champions League of the economies". Zapatero even promised full employment if he could repeat as president.

That strategy gave the PSOE very good electoral revenues, but the cost was that our country took a long time to react and it had to be the European Union that forced Spain, under threat of intervention , to undertake the structural reforms necessary to face a crisis translated into thousands of layoffs and business closures. The current situation is not that of more than 10 years ago, but it does not seem reasonable to repeat the error at that time. However, although there are more and more indicators that indicate the alarming slowdown in our economy , Sanchez was willing to have the election campaign focus on the reaction of independence to the Supreme Court ruling and the exhumation of the remains of Franco , trying to capture centrist votes of Cs, appealing to the unity of Spain, and leftists of Podemos, alluding to the end of the Transition and the recovery of historical memory.

But the warnings of organizations such as the Bank of Spain or the IMF, the National Accounting data published by the INE , loaded with negative indexes , and the commitment to send the budget plan for the year 2020 to Brussels on the 15th, which will necessarily have that being adjusted to the most prudent forecasts, will force Sanchez to have to respond in campaign of the economic situation. It is true that the main threats to the Spanish economy continue to come from outside, especially from the commercial war initiated by the Trump Administration , which will significantly affect exports of the agribusiness sector to the United States, and Brexit , whose consequences are still difficult to predict, depending on whether or not an agreement is reached between the EU and Great Britain.

However, there are also symptoms that would require stimulus policies. And in this sense, the main responsibility corresponds to Sánchez, who keeps the country blocked because of his inability to reach a governance agreement and will have to present the macroeconomic picture to the EU while in office, without knowing what color the next Government will be . Necessarily, neither Sánchez nor Calviño can hide from our community partners that the growth forecasts for this year will not exceed 2% (two tenths less than expected) and that the labor market, far from being "dynamic", as he said yesterday The Minister of Economy will remain at around 13% (the largest in the EU, only behind Greece), as the pace of job creation has slowed. Nor can they hide that the debt already accounts for 98.9% of GDP and that puts our country in a situation of special vulnerability to a new crisis . Economic reality has inevitably entered the campaign.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain
  • PSOE
  • GDP
  • We can
  • European Union
  • Greece
  • IMF
  • Citizens
  • economy
  • Editorial

Tribune to the apostles of the new policy

Tribune Any government or elections?

Printing Employment: serious generational hole