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Activity in the real estate market is recovering from its extraordinary slump between March and June. House sales and new building permits have regained much of the ground lost in Q3 2020, a trend we expect to consolidate in 2021. House prices, whose trend is still weak but without any extreme corrections, are expected to follow a similar trend in the coming quarters, ending 2021 with a decline of around 2%.

Spain’s agrifood sector is facing a new trade scenario marked by the US tariff hikes, with the rate currently set at 15% for European products pending clarification regarding possible strategic exceptions. In a context of increasing protectionism and weakening multilateralism, the sector is seeking ways to adapt by diversifying its markets and pursuing bilateral agreements through the EU. The agreement with Mercosur opens up opportunities for key products such as olive oil, wine and pork meat, but it also poses risks for competition in sensitive sectors such as beef and rice. Despite this, the competitiveness and diversification of Spain’s agrifood sector places it in a favourable position to tackle this challenging environment.

In 2023, Spain’s tourism sector remained on the path of recovery and growth, surpassing initial expectations and breaking records, not only in nominal expenditure but also in real terms. In 2024, we expect the positive trend for Spain’s tourism sector to continue and its GDP to increase by 2.5%, with the sector outpacing the overall economy and remaining one of the drivers of the Spanish economy.

We use internal data to analyse the behaviour of foreign visitors who stay in Spain for long periods of time. This is a segment of the population that tends to stay in second homes, seasonal rental homes or specialist accommodation – segments that are experiencing rising demand in Spain’s real estate market.

Spain’s real estate market slowed in 2023, but more gently than anticipated. Despite the sharp rise in interest rates, several factors have supported the sector, including a resilient labour market, significant immigration flows, the imbalance between the short supply of new housing and the high demand, and the improvement in household finances. On the supply side, the stabilisation of construction costs has allowed 2023 to end with a similar number of new home construction permits to that of previous years. In the first half of 2024, we expect this gentle slowdown to continue, as interest rates remain high and the economic environment continues to show signs of relative weakness; however, in the second half, as the downward path of interest rates takes hold and economic activity gains traction, we expect the real estate market to regain more vigour.

The citrus fruit sector is one of the most important in the Spanish agrifood system and a leading player in international export markets. Its production structure is typically atomised, making it more difficult to modernise the farms, and the sector has some important challenges to tackle. In particular, strong competition from non-EU countries at a time when production costs are rising sharply, accentuated by a prolonged drought and the war in Ukraine. In any case, the figures suggest that Spain’s citrus production continues to be the most competitive in the world, thanks to its hard-won reputation as a product of the highest quality produced under the strictest health standards.

The pharmaceutical industry is a key and strategic sector for Spain’s economy, as was clearly demonstrated by the pandemic. In the past 25 years, the sector has become hugely significant and an important driver of Spanish exports and private R&D investment. Nevertheless, its production capacity still has room for improvement. The future of Spanish industry should be more closely linked to the pharmaceutical sector with a commitment to promote its growth, not only for strategic purposes but also for purely economic reasons, since it is an extremely competitive industry with a great capacity to generate good quality jobs that would help to modernise Spain’s economy.

The Spanish residential market has suffered from a slump in foreign demand during the pandemic. Restrictions on international travel have hit the most tourist-oriented areas of the Mediterranean coast and islands particularly hard, which have seen a sharp fall in purchases by foreigners. Nevertheless, although house prices in these tourist-oriented municipalities have seen a marked slowdown, the adjustment was very moderate until Q1 2021 and the outlook for the coming quarters is good, thanks to the revival of international tourism, especially in the coming year.

Made in Spain, Made in the USA and even Made in China labels make less and less sense in today’s world. Since firms decided to fragment their production processes and move them to other countries, the label Made in the World probably better represents the nature of most of the manufactured goods we consume. In this article we review the past, present and future of global value chains at a time when pandemic-induced restrictions on travel and supply disruptions have brought them back into the spotlight.

The increase in energy prices throughout 2021 as a result of the combination of the sharp rise in global energy demand (due to the reactivation of the economic cycle) and a certain weakness in supply (due to geopolitical problems and the change in the energy model towards non-fossil fuels) has led to a global energy shock. In 2022, the geopolitical context is putting extra pressure on international gas and oil prices, which could aggravate the already significant impact of the energy bill on Spanish industry. This article examines the specific impact of rising energy prices on manufacturing, analysing which sub-sectors are being most affected and to what extent they are exposed to more sustained pressure on energy prices.

Spain’s real estate market started to slow down by mid-2022 with the change in monetary policy. For the time being, and despite the fact that the ECB has already raised its benchmark interest rates by 4 bp, the pace of this slowdown is proving to be gentler than anticipated, leading us to improve our forecasts for the sector in 2023. However, looking ahead to the coming quarters, we still expect a marked dip in the number of sales from the high figures recorded in 2022 as well as a slowdown in house price growth, especially in 2024, within the context of higher interest rates for longer. Nevertheless, there are several factors that will continue to support the sector and make a sharp correction such as the one seen in 2008-2013 unlikely, including a resilient labour market and significant inflows of immigrants.

The agrifood sector has continued to perform well since the most critical months of the pandemic. Primary sector production remains at a high level, the food industry is recovering from the slump experienced in 2020 and demand indicators suggest food consumption patterns are gradually getting back to normal, both in and outside the home. Agrifood exports are also booming, a lever of growth that will continue to be vital for the sector’s future.

In 2025, tourism consolidated its normalisation after the post-pandemic rebound, reaching record levels of activity and profitability. According to our estimates, tourism GDP grew by 2.7%, moderating from 6.0% in 2024, but giving way to a phase of expansion with more sustainable rates and even higher than pre-pandemic levels. International tourism reached new record highs, with 97 million arrivals (+3.5%) and spending of €135 billion (+7.0%), ranking Spain second worldwide in both arrivals (after France) and spending (after the USA). The hotel sector maintained record occupancy rates and improved its profitability, with particular dynamism in rural destinations compared to traditional ones. The outlook remains favourable: Tourism GDP is expected to grow between 2.5% and 2.7% annually in 2026-2027, slightly above the pace of the economy.

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.

The collapse of tourism in Spain in the wake of COVID-19 has pushed the tourism industry to undertake major price adjustments and the hotel sector has been the greatest exponent of this trend. According to data from the National Statistics Institute, the price per room per day charged by hotels in the summer of 2020 was 16% lower than the previous year. However, this huge price cut does not seem to have played a decisive role in reviving demand in some regions. The change in travel preferences brought about by the pandemic has meant that tourists have opted for nearby, familiar and less congested destinations, focusing less on price and thereby limiting the success of big reductions in hotel prices.

The tourism industry is no stranger to inflationary shock. Tourism-related prices are growing strongly and, specifically, the hotel sector is posting price rises well above the historical average. As is often the case, there is no single reason for this inflation in tourism but rather a compendium of changes in both supply and demand that have resulted in tourists having to pay much more than before the pandemic. In this article we look at the factors that lie behind this episode.

The full recovery of international tourism spending in Spain hides major changes in the structure of demand by region of origin. Using data on payments made with foreign cards on CaixaBank POS terminals, duly aggregated and anonymised, we see that Western Europe remains the main issuer of tourists, and that North America and Latin America significantly increased their share of foreign spending. In contrast, the recovery of tourism from the Middle East and Asia and Oceania has been more disparate, affected by geopolitical and economic factors. Overall, a stable but robust growth outlook for 2024-2025 indicates that international tourism in Spain will remain in good shape.

The pandemic has highlighted the strategic nature of the agrifood industry as an essential activity to supply the population with food. The sector has therefore been one of the least affected by the crisis: the primary sector's relative share of the total economy increased and the agrifood industry posted a much smaller decline than manufacturing industry as a whole in Q2 2020. Labour market trends have also been relatively favourable, with relatively few job losses and a smaller proportion of workers affected by furlough measures.

With the shock of the COVID-19 outbreak, tourism businesses reduced their activity, destroying a large number of jobs and taking massive advantage of Spain's furlough scheme (ERTE). Tourism supply is now attempting to revive itself. The lifting of mobility restrictions has encouraged a good number of tourist establishments to reopen their doors, even though demand is still low. With the start of the summer season, it is essential for the tourism sector to maintain, and benefit from, its commitment to reactivation as this is the only way to create jobs again.

This winter’s drought has highlighted one of the most important challenges facing Spain’s agrifood sector: improving how water resources are used given the prospect of their availability becoming more limited.