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On balance, all the indicators suggest that growth in the euro area will experience a notable slowdown in Q4 due to the bottlenecks, although for the time being we are confident that the quarter-on-quarter growth rates will still be above their long-term average.

International tourism spending accelerated slightly in March 2026, driven by the redirection towards Spain of tourist flows from the main European source countries. This upturn offset the decline in tourism from East Asia, which, although intense, represents only a small portion of tourist arrivals in Spain.

While the development of artificial intelligence dates back to the 1950s-60s, advances in the past decade have driven more recent developments in so-called generative AI, capable of producing text, code and audiovisual material based on patterns learned from large datasets. The deployment of AI can be divided into four key phases: innovation, development of new infrastructure, diffusion and widespread adoption of the new technology, and adaptation of business models and markets to the new technology.

Spain’s National Statistics Institute has revised the growth of recent years upwards and the flash indicators for Q3 point to an improvement in private consumption, despite the slowdown in the labour market in the quarter. Inflation unexpectedly fell to 1.5% in September, while housing demand was higher than expected.

In the three years prior to the pandemic, overnight stays in Q3 represented an average of around 40% of annual overnight stays. Therefore, whether tourism exceeds the pre-pandemic levels or not in 2023 depends largely on the sector’s performance in this period.

As a result of the deterioration in the expectations for the growth of oil demand, we have considered it appropriate to revise our baseline scenario for energy prices, although we are aware of the difficulty of incorporating the uncertain geopolitical scenario into the forecasts.

The economic recovery in the euro area continued during Q2, but it began to lose momentum in June. The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the euro area remained at levels compatible with positive growth in June, but disappointed by falling with respect to the previous month, weighed down by an industrial sector that is slipping deeper into recession.

The global economy is demonstrating remarkable resilience, despite all the uncertainty associated with Trump’s tariff policy. However, the risks to the global economy persist, with trade relations posing one of the biggest challenges. 

With a divided Congress, and in a highly polarised political environment, it seems unlikely that Joe Biden’s government will be able to push through proposals that drift far from the centre of the political spectrum. Not only that, it could also have difficulties in pushing through basic measures such as raising the debt ceiling.

The Spanish economy has once again exceeded our expectations in the opening months of 2024. While the GDP growth figure for the final quarter of 2023 was higher than expected, that of the first quarter of this year confirms the good performance of Spain’s economy and leads us to revise our forecasts upwards. Let’s re-examine the main factors that will determine the outlook for Spain’s economy, after incorporating the latest available information.

We analyse the changes in the export intensity of the various sectors of the Spanish economy dedicated to non-tourism goods and services, in order to diagnose the current state of the Spanish foreign sector and its recent evolution.

The macroeconomic landscape is once again constrained by a geopolitical conflict. The crisis between the US and Iran, which began over three months ago, remains under a fragile truce. However, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, which is currently the most damaging factor for the global economy. Spain is facing this episode from a position of strength, but rising energy costs and the deteriorating international environment will reduce economic dynamism and increase inflation. Therefore, we have revised our GDP growth forecast to 2.1% for 2026 and to 1.8% for 2027, compared to 2.4% and 2.0% previously. This is a moderate revision and it does not change the diagnosis of a dynamically growing economy.

Despite futures contracts indicating structurally higher oil prices in the coming years as a result of the biggest oil shock in history, markets also seem to be assuming a rapid normalisation of supply and demand conditions in the coming months.

The slowdown that is beginning to appear in the indicators is incorporated into the new CaixaBank Research forecasts, detailed in the following pages of this Monthly Report. Broadly speaking, the scenario anticipates positive activity growth, albeit more restrained between the second and third quarters of the year. Energy prices are expected to moderate by the end of 2026, according to oil and gas futures markets, which should lead to a slight re-acceleration of growth. 

We review recent developments in the European tourism sector, as well as its macroeconomic impact and the challenges it faces, after the number of international tourists who visited the continent last year exceeded the level recorded in 2019 by 12 million.