In parallel with the role of ERTEs, it is important to ensure the proper functioning of the different labour flexibility mechanisms available to firms, whose function is particularly useful in these circumstances for efficiently accomplishing the adjustments arising from the crisis. Active labour market and training policies for the unemployed and workers affected by ERTEs also take on considerable importance. Once suitably re-designed, these policies should be geared to boosting employability and smoothing the relocation of the workers most affected by the crisis to sectors or firms with greater growth potential. The criteria whereby support instruments are maintained, but after being appropriately designed so as not to distort the necessary adjustments in the economy, are also important. And particularly so those expressly intended to sustain the income of the most vulnerable households. The necessary implementation of an ambitious structural reform agenda Let us look beyond the policies needed in this phase of incipient economic recovery. Taking a broader view, the extraordinarily complex setting envisaged by the Banco de España’s latest economic projections - and those of the vast majority of analysts - for the coming years also means we should define a reform agenda aimed at tackling the structural challenges our economy faces, and which this crisis has made more pressing. In this setting, an ambitious reform strategy would be an essential lever for positioning the Spanish economy on a sustainable path of growth, job creation and well-being. One of the key structural challenges is that relating to the need to increase our economy’s growth potential.

In Spain’s case, in a setting in which the state of alert affected the last two weeks of Q1, we witnessed the biggest-ever contraction in GDP historically in a single quarter, namely a quarter-on-quarter rate of 5.2%. This decline was one of the most pronounced in the euro area, and was in response to several circumstances. These included a relatively greater severity of the lockdown measures (given, too, the greater intensity of the pandemic) and the presence of certain structural factors in our economy that make it more vulnerable to a shock of these characteristics. The most significant factor here is perhaps the high weight of the tourism-related sectors, which have been particularly affected by the social distancing measures. The reduction in hours worked, estimated at 5% in Q1, was also the biggestever in the time series and highlights the marked impact of the various measures affecting movement on the labour market in the early stages of this crisis. Admittedly, the restrictions on movement were gradually eased as from early May. But the state of alert ran for much of Q2, whereby a notable increase in the decline in GDP and in employment in this period is to be expected. The latest Banco de España macroeconomic projections, published in June against a background of unusually high uncertainty, posted estimates of quarter-on-quarter declines in activity in a range between -16% and -21.8%. And the information since available tends to confirm that the decline in economic activity in Q2 as a whole will have been in this range.