« The Sara Service Merges Property in Spain with Investment Properties Abroad Spanish Property Buyers Find Friends When They‘Peek at Spain’ »

Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package

Spain plans $15bn stimulus package

By Nazanine Moshiri in southern Spain

 



High interest rates have hit the property and construction sectors in Spain [GALLO/GETTY] 

As unemployment rates soar and the property and construction sectors decline, Al Jazeera reports on the Spanish government’s new $15bn stimulus scheme.  
 
As the first US-style fiscal package to be adopted by a European government, the plan is a clear indication of how worried Spain is about its economy.
 
The downturn comes after years of economic boom, particularly in the property and construction sectors, which have proved vulnerable in the current global credit crisis.
 
María Dolores Alfonso, an economics professor at Seville University, said that Spaniards are now facing up to the crisis.
 
“From not even figuring in people’s conversations a few months ago, it’s now the star topic that you hear everywhere,” she said.
 
“We are definitely in a crisis, you see it, you feel it, you breathe it.”
 
Job losses
 
The property and construction sectors have been hit the hardest by high interest rates, Alfonso said.
 
Spain’s construction boom was financed by borrowing from the banks.
 
The credit crunch has forced the country’s biggest property companies into renegotiating billions of dollars worth of debts.
 

Carlos Paneque, an architect from Seville, 
has had to lay off several employees

Carlos Paneque, an architect from Seville, recently had to lay off several employees.

 
“What might make this crisis worse now is that we were in such a boom period when the recession hit, but construction always has cyclical periods of growth then loss, it will recuperate,” he told Al Jazeera.
 
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of property agents have also been shut down.
 
And many of the thousands of building sites across Spain and along the Spanish coast now lay dormant, with no indication of when they might start up again.
 
Cheap labour
 
What has made the crisis all the worse is how the property downturn is being coupled with the loss of much of Spain’s manufacturing industry.
 
In the southern city of Cadiz, factory bosses are moving operations across the straits of Morocco to take advantage of cheaper labour.
 
Braulio Martinez works for one of Spain’s biggest unions, UGT, in the bay of Cadiz, and has been dealing with the fallout of the closure of the Delphi factory, which made car parts for its US owners.
 
He said: “The news was a massive blow with no explanation, and we were left asking ourselves about where our dignity was after giving so much of our lives to this factory.”
 
Martinez and the former Delphi workers have been working with the government to implement a plan to attract potential investors in the bay.
 
Some companies have taken the bait but they are yet to move in.
 
It looks like by the time they do, many of Martinez’s members will have been unemployed for years.
 
They already say their children are leaving the area and are more hopeful of finding work elsewhere.

Tags: spanish, property

del.icio.us:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package digg:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package spurl:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package wists:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package simpy:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package newsvine:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package blinklist:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package furl:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package reddit:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package fark:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package blogmarks:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package Y!:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package smarking:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package magnolia:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package segnalo:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package gifttagging:Al Jazeera English - News - Spain Plans $15Bn Stimulus Package

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Buying property in Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

property for sale in costa blanca spain

Leave a Reply