The Spanish economy achieves a record rebound, but remains far from the pre-crisis level

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• Spanish economy sees record-high quarterly rise, but remains far from pre-crisis levels

The relaxation of confinements and public intervention to avoid layoffs and business closures led the Spanish economy to grow 16.7% in the third quarter of the year, the highest increase in the historical series.

The slight summer truce of the virus and the low point from which it started after the descent into hell in the previous three months contributed to the recovery of activity between July and September after the dry stop in the second quarter.

The fireworks will however be brief: pre-crisis levels are a distant point on the horizon after almost a quarter of GDP volatilized in the first half of the year, only 59% of what was lost has been recovered and the economy still falls by 8 , 7% in annual rate compared to the third quarter of 2019, double that in the euro zone.

In addition, the increase in restrictions throughout Europe due to the resurgence of infections threatens the improvement.

The magnitude of the progress has beaten what was expected by the Government, which predicted around 13% progress, and by most study services.

"The data that we have seen this week show the strong reactivation of the economy and employment during the third quarter," celebrated the economic vice president, Nadia Calviño.

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"We are in a moment of high uncertainty both at European and global level," he admitted.

The Third Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño.

In video, Calviño assures that the rise in GDP shows "the strong reactivation of the economy during the third quarter" .ÓSCAR J. BARROSO |

EUROPE PRESS

In normal times, an economic advance of 16.7% would be considered an extraordinary feat.

In times of pandemic it resembles a bandage over an open wound.

The worst summer in history for tourism, with a collapse of close to 70% and 40,000 million less in income, has not been enough to stop a practically assured rebound as the economy left hibernation, bars returned to serving rations, concessionaires to sell cars and airplanes to fly.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, the national demand pulled the car, gaining 11 points with respect to the internal quarter, while the external one contributed 1.8 points more than in spring.

Investment (16.3%) and household consumption (20.7%) improved compared to the previous quarter.

By sectors, industry was the one that increased the most (27%), especially manufacturing, followed by construction (22.5%) and services (15%), driven by the pull of commerce, transport and hospitality ( 42.5%).

Agriculture remained stagnant.

The labor market outlines the recovered pulse well, although the heart rate remains on the verge of arrhythmia.

The Great Spring Seclusion swept away a million jobs.

In summer, 569,600 were recovered and 80% of the workers have left the ERTE.

Unemployment is at 16.3% after the formidable blow inflicted by the pathogen, a fact that speaks of the fact that the hemorrhage is being contained - for now -: after the Great Recession, the Spanish unemployment rate moved above 20% for no less than 22 quarters.

The lessons that Europe seems to have learned about how to fight a crisis, with the big organizations abandoning the

obsession

to push an expansion of spending never seen before, has not been enough to recover all the feathers.

Neither has it been to reach the highest quarterly growth level - the previous one dates from 1972 and was 2.2%.

"The GDP growth of the third quarter confirms the forecasts of the initial rebound after the collapse of the second quarter, but despite this, the Spanish economy has recovered only half of what it lost in the first half of the year", warns Ángel Talavera, Oxford Economics chief analyst for Europe.

Technically, Spain comes out of the recession, but the reasons for the revelry are not abundant.

The recovery looks less and less like a V and the economy shows symptoms of taking your foot off the gas with the second wave putting sticks in the wheels.

The services sector contracted again in August after two months of rise.

Research services such as BBVA Research have already lowered their forecast for the end of the year and next year.

The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, warned on Thursday that the main indicators are showing signs of weakness since September and the economy is staggering, with a headwind that can turn into a hurricane at any time: the confinements are inversely proportional to the growth, and increasingly frequent and restrictive with infections at maximum.

“The outlook for the fourth quarter is rapidly worsening and we could see a further decline in activity, albeit much less than what we suffered at the beginning of the year.

This, rebound, makes the annual growth for 2021 to worsen.

The recovery to the level of GDP prior to the crisis will be long and could be delayed until 2023 ”, predicts Talavera.

The third quarter thus appears as a fleeting parenthesis.

Forecasts already anticipated a double-digit advance for Spain, amid a wave of rebounds in other large economies such as France (+ 18.2%), Italy (16.1%), Germany (8.2% or the United States (+ 7.4%), although the latter two did not start from such a low threshold given that they suffered a much smaller setback in the first half of the year.

The numbers for this Friday seem to be born therefore expired.

And they follow the trend of the period of extreme variations that the activity is experiencing, with a record volatility above and below, and the forecasts changing at the speed of light from one month to another at the frenetic pace of contagions.