His government is the first by a party of the right since the transition. While Spain has been reinventing itself politically, it has also been transforming its way of doing business. A centralized, introverted economy controlled rigidly from Madrid has broken open into one that is regional, outward-looking, increasingly deregulated, and right now running hot. Many of these are within the number one industry, tourism, which each year sees Spain's 39 million inhabitants outnumbered by foreign vacationers. One indicator of the drive behind the economic upswing is that Spaniards are again conquering Latin America, this time in Armani rather than armor.
Brazil is a bigger market than France, Italy and the U.K. combined.
Steering the economic ship is Rodrigo Rato, whose donnish appearance and fluent English make him seem more a British chancellor of the exchequer than a Spanish economy minister. Rato is not short of numbers to show how well Spain is doing. Social and cultural change has also altered the face of Spain. The Roman Catholicism that once saturated its art, literature and daily life has receded since the departure of Franco who, in his death throes, lay surrounded by the best doctors but clinging to relics of saints. There are other indicators of this secularization.