The tourism industry is a key sector for Spain's economy and the decline forecast in tourism for 2020 will have a major impact on the country's level of economic activity. However, this economic impact will not be spread evenly throughout Spain as there are big differences between regions in the relative importance of the tourism sector. We expect the islands and Mediterranean communities to be more exposed than the average in Spain, while inland regions will suffer less.

One of the consequences of the COVID-19 health crisis has been the increased awareness of the population and, by extension, that of politicians regarding the need to include sustainability criteria in economic policies in order to promote a more sustainable and resilient reactivation of the economy. The tourism industry is no stranger to these trends; firstly, because its business can be adversely affected by the consequences of climate change and, secondly, because there is ample scope for the industry to become more sustainable. This article attempts to determine what we understand by sustainability in the tourism sector, how it can be measured, the current situation of Spain’s tourism industry and where it is heading.

The severe restrictions imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in an unprecedented drop in consumption and thereby a record rise in household savings. A large part of these new savings has been involuntary, caused by the impossibility of maintaining the usual level of consumption. According to our estimates, the lifting of restrictions that started in May will encourage part of these involuntary savings to be spent on consumption, this being one of the keys to a rapid recovery of consumption in 2021.

The distribution of consumer spending over the month, a key question for understanding consumer behaviour, has not yet been studied in the depth it deserves because of the scarcity of high-frequency public data. How do consumers allocate their spending week by week? How much more do they spend at the beginning of the month, which is when most people are paid? Do we consume with the same intensity regardless of our age or our income? Thanks to the use of CaixaBank’s internal data on a daily frequence, we are able to carefully analyse the time patterns of consumption and answer these questions.

International tourism tends to be the main focus of attention when we talk about Spain’s tourism industry. However, domestic tourism also plays an important role: Spaniards travel more than 175 million times a year within Spain and generate an associated tourist expenditure of 30,000 million euros1. In this article, we examine the recent trends in Spain’s domestic tourism and discuss the main differences between domestic and international tourists.

The vaccination of the population at risk, the containment of any further outbreaks and the implementation of the Digital Green Certificate will be key factors in tourism improving its performance significantly during the second half of 2021.

The Spanish economy has a diverse, export-oriented and highly productive manufacturing sector. However, the business fabric is still highly fragmented compared to German industry, a European benchmark. Increasing company size and the productivity of companies, through investment in R&D and adopting new digital technologies, and moving towards Industry 4.0 are key in the increasing competitiveness of a fundamental sector for the economy and for the Spanish foreign sector. The sector must also evolve towards a more sustainable industrial model: only companies that successfully undertake the energy transition will be able to compete in a new environment in which sustainability will be a prerequisite for continuing to operate in the market.

Europe’s economic response to the COVID-19 crisis took shape in July: the European Council approved the Recovery Plan for Europe, the so-called NGEU, via which the European Union will grant up to 750 billion euros to its member states to stimulate their economic recovery after the shock of the pandemic. This is an unprecedented agreement and it could have a considerable impact on Europe’s real estate sector since one of the EU’s main goals, to which this Recovery Plan aims to contribute significantly, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. It is clear that renovating Europe’s buildings, which are responsible for 40% of the continent’s energy consumption, will be key to achieving this climate target.

Technology is advancing at a frenetic pace and offers the agrifood chain a large number of opportunities to make its production more efficient and sustainable. Moreover, the arrival of COVID-19 has shown that the most digitalised companies were able to continue their activities more readily than the rest. In this article we examine the degree of popularity of the different digital technologies used in the primary sector and agrifood industry based on a text analysis of over 2 million tweets on Twitter. All these technologies are essential to create a connected ecosystem that will make up the Food Chain 4.0 of the future.

Commercial real estate performed very well in the first half of 2022 but this situation is changing rapidly in the wake of the sharp hike in interest rates implemented by the ECB to curb the advance of inflation. All the evidence seems to suggest that office property may see the largest adjustment in valuation terms as this has the narrowest yields. Retail, whose valuations have already suffered several years of intense adjustment, could now become more stable than the rest of the segments. On the other hand, logistics assets, the star product lately due to the boom in e-commerce, may be more sensitive to any deterioration in the macroeconomic environment. Finally, we look at the co-living segment which has been attracting a lot of investor interest recently in Spain, especially in the case of senior living, a segment with very positive prospects considering the demographic outlook that will support demand in the medium and long term and the current limited supply.

In June 2016, the United Kingdom’s vote in favour of leaving the European Union (EU) opened up a new scenario for the British economy that could have important repercussions for the Spanish economy and particularly for the tourism industry, which receives around 16 million British tourists a year1. In this article we examine the impact of Brexit on the number of British tourists visiting Spain and its potential impact in the future under different EU exit scenarios.

2020 will go down in history as the year of COVID but it will also be remembered that, faced by a very difficult situation, the response provided by the food chain was extraordinary, guaranteeing an uninterrupted supply to all Spanish households. A year and a half later, the primary sector still looks remarkably dynamic, although the exceptional growth rates posted during the most critical months of the pandemic have now been left behind.