PP’s view of the stagnation of the Spanish economy

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of the PP, assured last Thursday June 8 that the Spanish economy is in a “moment of stagnation” and criticized the “unfair victory” of the Pedro Sánchez government, while the country has not recovered its previous GDP. Due to the epidemic, there is a high unemployment rate and according to the popular diagnosis, the purchasing power of families has decreased. In Feijo’s words, the country’s “medical history” was “good” (from Min. 10:21)

However, the most important figures in the economy gathered at the conferences 45 birthday From the newspaper Five days Contrary to PP’s analysis they have acknowledged the good state of the Spanish economy.

Santander’s CEO Angel Rivera made this clear when he indicated that “the outlook is positive” (Minute 59:15) “We ended a quarter with growth in Spain, a Greater than expected growth”, added the banker. The head of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Coricolzari, expressed the same. “All of us who had been overly optimistic about the evolution of the Spanish economy were surprised” (Minutes 4:50:51) “The Spanish Economy He behaves well More than planned”, Koirikoljari continued.

Ibercaja’s CEO, Víctor Iglesias, assured that “Spain’s economy is responding”, contrary to what the PP confirmed. Admirably” (Minutes 4:25:43) “Despite the chain of crises we suffer, we have positive data even in the first months of the year, which has led all national and international analytical institutions to raise growth forecasts for the Spanish economy,” he stressed. Bank bosses, for their part, explained that the economy is “doing better than we expected a few months ago, employment is good, the recession is a bit lower than expected, so all good news”. Kindelon, president of the Spanish Banking Association (Minutes 4:08:12)

In addition, recent progress from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) GDP is 3.8% year-on-year, implying 0.5% growth in the first quarter of 2023. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, forecasts for the full year are higher than 2% (OECD), above Germany, France or Italy and the Eurozone.

PP asserts that Spain’s economy is stagnating, banks’ CEOs disagree

The PP has promised on several occasions that the economy is going bad in Spain, which is an argument to criticize the management of the coalition administration. Feijóo complained that Spain was in a moment of “economic stagnation”. “Even the most pessimistic believe we are in a moment of economic decline,” he asserted at the Southern Summit 2023 Entrepreneurship Forum last Thursday, June 8.

“Why?” He asked himself, then answered himself. “Because we have not yet recovered the GDP of 2019. Because one out of every four unemployed Europeans is Spanish. Because we have high female unemployment and high youth unemployment. Because we have lost purchasing power, less disposable family income, and not being able to balance income and expenses, 4.8% Due to deficit.Portugal 0.4% [de déficit] And we are [lo superamos en] More than 10 times.” And, finally, because “we have a debt of 1.5 trillion long euros, which means that Spain has issued eight million euros of public debt every hour in the last five years.”

Already in March, Juan Bravo, the popular Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, He shared Negative analysis of the leader of the PP on the economy of Spain. “We’re losing productivity, we’re not reducing unemployment, it’s going downhill and without brakes. Spain is not doing well. You can’t base everything on mandates, raise taxes and think everything will be fine with that. We have to put the country on the path to growth,” he told a conference on family economics and housing. .

Cuca Gamarra, Secretary General of the PP, presented his opinion on the growth data of the economy in relation to Spain’s GDP published by the OECD on June 7. “Analyzing the background of the OECD report, the Spanish economy is sluggish,” he said in statements to the media.

Checks on famous people’s affirmations about economics

From Newtral.es, in addition to the negative diagnosis of the Spanish economy, we have verified on other occasions that the PP has justified this opinion with false or misleading statements. For example, we check that last Document published by OECDSpain’s economy is “significantly better” and forecasts for GDP growth in Spain have been revised upwards. Last report of 2022Contrary to the words of Kuka Kamarra.

As we inquired at Newtral.es, Feijóo confirmed in May that Spain is “in a phase of deterioration of the business structure” with some data on the creation of companies that official sources do not recognize. In the past year, self-employed people have not been lost, but their number has increased by 2,558 people, according to the average subsidiary. Social security. On the other hand, the data of Central business directory (Dirce), published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the number of companies has also grown to more than 26,000 with Sánchez at the helm.

Other party members shared a negative view of Spain’s economy. According to Vice Chancellor Carlos Rojas by far, “Spain is the country where real wages have fallen the most in the euro zone.” As we checked at Newtral.es, this is one of the countries OECD It stands out for a fall in real wages of more than 5%, and this variable is not where it falls so much. There are five other member states above Spain.

Rojas, like other PP comrades, confirmed that Spain’s economy is going bad as it is last in the Eurozone in terms of GDP per capita. However, the statistics portal Eurostat It has 14 countries with lower per capita income than Spain at the end of 2022 (latest data available). But in addition, these data show that since 2000, as we have explained in Newtral.es, the Spanish figure has never taken last place.