500 Monthly Reports

To a certain extent, the MR has embraced the words uttered by Professor Enrique Fuentes Quintana at a conference in November 1979: «a responsible democratic citizen is one who knows how to make choices on the basis of accurate information, and my purpose, therefore, is going to be simply to try and inform those who listen to me about where the economic crisis generally lies, such that each person can then make whatever decisions they consider appropriate guided by their free sense of responsibility and freedom.» We like to think that the MR does its bit to help readers make better decisions.

These 500 issues have spanned a period that has seen major economic events and huge changes. The MR has witnessed Spain’s admission into the European Economic Community, the creation of the euro, the housing bubble and the consequences of its bursting, the Great Recession that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the European sovereign debt crisis, COVID-19, the energy shock triggered by the invasion of Ukraine and, now, the tariff crisis caused by the Trump administration. We have not lacked, nor do we lack now, major topics to address. During this period, Spain’s population has grown by 30%, employment by 76%, GDP in real terms by 160% (2.2% annually on average) and the CPI has increased six-fold. Fortunately, inflation is no longer a chronic problem for the Spanish economy. Unfortunately, productivity remains a challenge that is yet to be addressed.

The way in which we prepare the MR has also changed significantly. 45 years ago, the economists of the ”la Caixa” Research Service received economic information from official agencies by post, or by fax at best. This information arrived with a significant time lag, but it was analysed with the utmost rigour and with the tools that were available at the time. Today, the National Statistics Institute (INE) publishes its first GDP estimate online just four weeks after the end of each quarter. Moreover, in addition to the official data, we can use internal, anonymised data to try to understand what is going on in our economy in almost real time. The internet, big data and other advances have enabled us to greatly improve our productivity. This is a good example to illustrate that technological improvements do not necessarily lead to job destruction. If we were doing the same thing as our colleagues were back in 1980, then there could be far fewer of us on the team, but the improvement in productivity has allowed us to expand our analyses and our tasks to encompass all those we cover today.

This month we are marking 500 issues, and we intend to mark 500 more. In these next 500 issues, we would like to be able to explain that, in the end, Trump’s shock affecting international trade was not as serious as it could have been; that the EU took the Draghi and Letta reports seriously and implemented changes that nurtured a truly single market as well as its competitiveness; that the productivity of the Spanish economy ended up taking off after a series of reforms bolstered its human capital, promoted the growth of the average business size and improved the efficiency and effectiveness of public administrations; that Spain was able to build enough homes to facilitate access to all segments of the population; that we managed to address the enormous challenge of declining birth rates and increasing longevity in time; that our efforts in the fight against climate change allowed us to avoid the worst-case scenarios; and that artificial intelligence contributed to an improvement in general well-being without having the effects on inequality that some had feared. No doubt not all of these wishes will be fulfilled, but what we can promise is that we will strive to continue to address all of these issues with the utmost rigour.

Finally, several acknowledgements are due. To all the teams in CaixaBank or ”la Caixa” that have contributed to these 500 issues of the MR. To all those at the bank who, throughout its history, have supported the Research Service and have promoted our external publications. And, of course, to our readers, for being so loyal and so demanding, which helps us to be better. To everyone, thank you all very much.

And, now, here’s to 500 more.