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The ageing of the population will have a major impact on the public finances of advanced economies. The mechanism is well known: the ageing of the population and the consequent increase in dependency ratios can reduce tax revenues and increase public spending substantially. The main message of this article is that demographics will exert intense upward pressure on the public finances in Spain and Europe.

In the coming years, the paths of interest rates and nominal GDP growth will create an environment in which it will not be so easy to regain fiscal space without a proactive effort by governments.

2025 is set to be a year of change between a world that has not quite died yet (globalisation, multilateralism, liberal democracies) and another that has not quite been born and which nobody knows what shape it will take.

The international economy showed remarkable resilience in 2024 and the available data suggest that world GDP may have grown slightly above 3%. The tailwinds that supported economic activity will likely continue to blow in 2025, albeit with less strength and in the face of significant challenges.

Spain’s GDP continued to record dynamic growth in Q3 2024 and the main indicators suggest this trend will continue in Q4. The strength of the labour market is boosting household incomes and inflation remains contained, despite the ongoing rebound.

The summer of 2025 – one of relative calm in the financial markets despite the volatility of the macroeconomic environment – has brought with it a change of gear between the Fed and the ECB. While France is emerging as a new source of instability, in the US sovereign rates are adjusting to monetary policy expectations, but they do not seem to fear institutional risk. The stock markets enjoy another month of gains, and among commodities, crude oil remains stable and gold reaches a new high. 

The AIReF has ruled that the pension spending rule agreed with the European Commission has not been violated, although it has pointed out that complying with this rule does not guarantee the sustainability of the pension system or that of the general government as a whole. Moreover, it has warned that it will be necessary to increase government transfers to the Social Security system in order to sustain it between now and 2050.

The international economy has returned from the summer with signs of resilience, less uncertainty, but more tariffs. There are indications of an improvement in European activity in Q3, signs of a less robust labour market in the United States, and divergent inflation between the two sides of the Atlantic.

Portugal’s growth in the first quarter of the year fell short of expectations, shrinking 0.5% quarter-on-quarter according to the preliminary estimate of Portugal’s National Statistics Institute.

At least for now, and despite the depreciation it has accumulated so far this year, the value of the dollar does not appear to reflect any major change in the currency’s central role in the international monetary system.

In these first few months of the year, Spain’s GDP has continued to grow at a significant rate, although the gap between the services and industrial sectors persists. Job creation is gaining traction, while inflation continues to decline, driven by the fall in energy prices. The trade deficit continued to increase in February and residential activity in Spain has had the best start to the year since 2007.

Los indicadores de actividad de noviembre apuntan a un 4T muy positivo para la economía española, mientras que la inflación se estabiliza en cotas aún algo elevadas y el aumento del precio de la vivienda no da tregua. El superávit en cuenta corriente se reduce por el tirón importador, y también el déficit público respecto al año pasado.

This month, we have updated our forecast scenario for the Spanish economy. Although we now expect growth to be slightly lower than previously anticipated, the message remains broadly positive and there are several elements sustaining the Spanish economy’s dynamic growth.

In our revision of the international forecast scenario, we maintain the assumption that the bilateral tariff between the US and the EU will be 10%. We also maintain the assumption that the tariffs between the US and China will reach a level of 60% in 2025 (an increase of 45 pps compared to December 2024), but now this increase is not anticipated to take place as gradually as we previously thought.

The truce in the tariff tensions between Washington and Beijing ended up fuelling a renewed risk appetite in May. However, the optimism was gradually overshadowed as the month progressed by the predictable fiscal deterioration in the US and other developed economies, as well as by the persistent volatility in Trump’s trade policy.

We expand on the assessment of the economic impact of the blackout on 28 April in Spain by taking a cross-section by sector and autonomous community region, based on the analysis of internal CaixaBank data.

Q2 2025 began with all bets placed on a slowdown in the growth of the Spanish economy. In early April, and after months of threats, the Trump administration announced bilateral tariffs and catapulted the main uncertainty indicators to all-time highs. Weeks later, a blackout left the Iberian Peninsula without electricity for a day. Moreover, all this happened in an environment in which the euro area economy was once again showing signs of cooling.

In the other pages of this Dossier, we have analysed in depth how ageing will affect the capacity for economic growth and the public finances. All these changes will have consequences on the supply and demand for savings and, therefore, on the interest rates of economies.