Espagne : la recherche d'un nouveau développement grâce à la dynamique européenne
Authors: Colin Roland 
Published: October 2008

In Search of a New Start Thanks to the European Dynamics Roland Colin Spain's entry into the European Community on 1st January 1986 was the result of lengthy negotiations involving the proponents and opponents of integration. Now, after a year of experience, evidence on some of the issues is becoming a little clearer. On the one hand, there is agreement that Spain's economic modernisation in the Community is a must. On the other hand, in geopolitical terms, the harmonisation of a twelve-nation Europe has been made yet harder, and hence increases the need for the reinforcement of the decision-making process which the Single European Act envisages for 1992. That year, the five hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, recalls Spain's prestigious past, a contrast with its subsequent difficult historical evolution. After the Reconquest, which did not abolish the marks of Islam, followed by the « Golden Century », the Spanish monarchy suffered the shock of the Napoleonic invasions. During the XIXth century the difficult process of industrial revolution was several times disturbed by the resurgence of past models. The advanced modernisation of Catalonia and the north Atlantic coast lays in sharp contrast with the traditional agricultural systems in the centre and south. In 1936 the Civil War put an end to the nascent expansion of the economy, and left deep social scars. Francoism imposed silence beyond the drama with an iron fist, and introduced a protectionism which was as idealogical and political as it was economic. From the sixties, an opening up of the economy became essential : the Spanish « economic miracle » did not however bite into the dictatorship. After Franco's death, in 1975, the « political miracle » of a successful démocratisation under the unexpected impulse of King Juan Carlos had to face the two successive « oil shocks ». The economy had to adjust to painful and necessary new conditions. And more generally the industrial restructuring, a prerequisite of the « European project », was accompanied by Europe's highest unemployement rate, wich reached 22 per cent at the beginning of 1986. The agricultural crisis has opposed the farm exporting Mediterranean side to the still archaic parts of the centre and the south. The « tertiarisation » of the country constitutes the dominant feature of the new economy resulting partly from the performance of tourism. At the time of entry into the European Community — under the strong leadership of Felipe Gonzalez' Socialist government which was pursuing, not without social clashes, an economic adjustment policy — the opportunities for Spain, henceforward well recognised, are facing serious hurdles. The « hot segments » of the Spanish economy and society signal a range of problems : how to establish a new social equilibrium, so as to overcome unemployment, ensure the economic and social participation of women, youth, and the « left out » ? How to regulate, internally and externally, an economic system which is in a state of trasformation, and how to prevent its « satellisation » at a lower level of a new European division of labour ? How to respond to the « external vocation » of the Arabo-Mediterranean and Ibero-American heritage, while also incorporating the « internal vocation » written into the dynamics of the « Autonomous Communities » : seventeen Spains into Spain ? How also to prevent the risk of quasi institutional monopoly of power in the hands of PSOE in an economically evolving society in which there are no signs of credible or potential alternatives ? This chronicle of the Spanish economy, building on a historical and political analysis, attempts to describe the system of economic structures and its regulators made before and since the entry of Spain in the European Community. The intention is to highlight the terms of a « problématique » which concerns the European partners of Spain as well as the Spainsh themselves.