ABSTRACT
For all the enormous political transformation Spain has undergone since Franco died, perhaps the greatest changes to affect the country in recent decades have been economic. In the 1950s it was still regarded by the United Nations as part of the developing world: now it has the planet’s ninth largest GDP and its firms have turned it into the sixth biggest net investor abroad in the world. The first section of this chapter traces the course of economic change since 1975, highlighting two major themes. The second then considers four areas of imbalance in the economy that have clouded Spain’s success story, and to some extent still do so. The third section describes briefly the major sectors of economic activity in Spain, and its distribution between regions. This is followed by a section which looks at the main features of Spanish companies, and, in the final section, there is an outline of two of the key economic lobby groups in Spain, viz., trade unions and employers’ organizations.
