ABSTRACT
Looking at the aggregate economic performance of the Spanish economy in the 1960s, it is no exaggeration to label the period extending from 1960 to 1972 as the decade of a W. W. Rostow-like ‘industrial take-off’. During this period, Spain’s real gross national product grew at an annual average rate of 7.3 %, a rate of growth which allowed a doubling of per capita income between 1965 and 1972 and which elevated the relative position of Spain’s per capita income from about half that of Western Europe in the early 1960sabout US$500 for Spain as compared with US$1, 000 for Western Europe – to between two-thirds and three-fourths of the Western European average at the end of the decade – US$1, 300 for Spain and US$1, 800 for Western Europe. The rates of economic growth achieved by the Spanish economy in the 1960s not only exceeded those recorded during any earlier period of Spain’s economic history, but also figured among the highest rates of economic growth realized during the 1960s in Western Europe and in the world. The Spanish Stabilization Plan of 1959 indeed announced the coming of an impressive ‘economic miracle’. Per capita income in Spain in 1958 was still lower than it had been in 1930, but by 1970 this per capita income exceeded corresponding income levels in Eastern Europe, in Mediterranean Europe, with the exception of Italy, and in most of Latin America. The 1960s brought rapid industrialization, urbanization and significant rural emigration to Spain, phenomena which resulted in a major transformation of the economy, and Spain ceased to be an essentially agrarian country.
