Lessons from Spain’s recovery after the euro crisis

JUST six years ago Spain seemed to be the European Union’s biggest economic calamity, menacing the survival of the euro itself. As it goes on holiday this week, it is in much brighter shape. Thanks to structural reforms and some good fortune, it is enjoying a sustained recovery. Spanish politics has little of the xenophobia common elsewhere in Europe. Forty years after it became a democracy, on issues of personal liberty such as gay marriage Spain feels Scandinavian rather than southern European. Boasting the world’s second-highest life expectancy, a good health service and world-class transport infrastructure, it is in many ways a great place to live.

Yet that is not how many Spaniards see it. The slump in 2009-13 opened wounds that have yet to heal (see Special report). Spain is still more unequal, has more poor and more low-paid workers than in 2008. Real wages have fallen. Many younger Spaniards have had to delay their plans for a career, a house and children. Politics reflects that. A stable two-party system gave way in 2015 to hung parliaments, as public ire fuelled two newish parties: Podemos on the radical left and Ciudadanos, a centrist party a bit like the one running France.