It appears that at the next general meeting of the Alhaurin de la Torre council in September, the councillors are to give the green light to an ambitious project to create an ‘airport city’. The project, over fifteen years, will lead to the creation of a commercial and industrial zone covering 3.8 million square metres in the north-eastern part of the municipality, near the extended Malaga airport.
The downgrading of Spain was done for strange reasons. Spain’s has a debt to GDP of 90% (against 144% of for Greece) and a budget deficit of 7% (against Greece’s 14%). More importantly, the spread over German bunds is 250 bps against 700bps. With an AA rating (compared to Greece’s BB), even after the recent downgrading from AAA, Spanish creditworthiness is strong.
Recently the Prime Minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, announced that by 2011 mortgage relief for those earning more than 24,000€ will be stopped. After originally reading the article Zapatero and Common sense I have had time to do a bit of research on the topic and Spain does not seem to be alone in this ‘gesture’, with countries like Ireland having implemented similar measures recently.
Properties along Spains Mediterreanan coast (Costa Brava, Costa Dorada, Costa del Azahar, Costa Blanca, Costa Cálida, Costa de Almeria, Costa de Granada, Costa del Sol and Costa de la Luz) are down 11.5% in March 2009 year-on-year. But before anyone complains to me about ‘doom & gloom’, I am actually quite pleased about this information!
In the current economic climate, which has seen a vast changes in interest rates, high unemployment and a very complex Inheritance Tax Law, I have decided to contact a financial services company. Siddals Spain has recently developed financial services specifically tailored to help people save time, money and combat the negative effect of the “credit crisis”.
I have just reviewing a range of official statistics (Registro de Propiedades, INE, etc..) have compiled a brief analysis on how the Spanish property market fared in 2008. As can be imagined sales are down (surprised?), but not all appears to be doom and gloom.
In an interesting more Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is giving Spain’s town halls are to be given a key role in fighting Spain’s economic crisis.
I’ve just been reviewing the BBC website and I found a great article. It starts with the statement “The unemployment rate in Spain hit a 12-year high in 2008 of 3 million, figures show, a further sign of the economic slowdown.”
So unemployment figures show that there are the same amount of unemployed now in Spain as there was in 1996. But what does this mean?
According to the Central Bank of Spain, the Spanish economy has shrunk by 0.2% in the third quarter compared to the previous 3 months. This is the first such drop in economic output in 15 years when in 1993 the economy shrunk by 0.3% relative to the previous quarter.
