Summary

The Spanish economy of the last ten years has been benefited by a series of factors such as the devaluation of the peseta, the euro implementation, the drop in interest rates, the introduction of structural funds or the impact of the demographic factors on the public retirement and pensions’ system which have largely influenced the improvement of the real convergence indexes with the European Union. Some of these elements will remain in the future, but others, such as the possibility of currency devaluation in order to make up the lost competitiveness will not. The loss of the currency devaluation instrument will demand that the Spanish economy, within a global economy framework, join all reasonable efforts in the improvement of productivity. This calls for giving priority to those policies that may increase the economy’s potential growth channeling the public and private resources towards productive investment, and changing the growth pattern of the last years which was focused on consumption and private housing investment.