The government did more or less what it had to to combat the crisis, but Spain has spent less than other countries, according to the ECB and the IMF, in part due to a lack of fiscal muscle.
The Executive's speech does not vary, but an inflection is detected in the story: Economy already admits that the third wave "will negatively affect growth", at least in the first quarter, according to a document that EL PAÍS has had access to.
And now it puts the accent - more Keynesian - on "avoiding the premature withdrawal of support and orchestrating schemes that help companies", as requested by social agents and the Bank of Spain.
Biblical translation: there will be more measures to save the coming months, waiting for the vaccines to act and the European funds to arrive.
There are a few bad months left before vaccines and the 140,000 million in European funds begin to clear the way out to recovery.
Economy, which until now clung to its forecasts - an unattainable growth of 9.8% this year, in the best of cases -, is already beginning to admit it black on bank: "The third wave and the tightening of the measures of containment of the coronavirus will negatively affect the first quarter of the year ”, according to the aforementioned Ministry document.
And the great risk is a wave of company insolvencies, which the IMF and the Bank of Spain have been warning about: "It is essential to avoid the preventive withdrawal of support and to orchestrate mechanisms that help viable companies to survive," he says. report.
The vice president Nadia Calviño yesterday specified a little more in Barcelona the measures that she has been announcing for weeks but that do not finish arriving.
The Executive is working to expand "as soon as possible" direct aid to companies, and has sent to Brussels a battery of proposals to respond to the needs of the productive fabric.
The autonomies will provide direct aid "more adjusted" to the characteristics of each region, and the State will take measures from the fiscal and financial point of view, through the ICO, according to Calviño.
Economy thus designs a kind of bridge to weather the problems of the coming months, which will not be minor: after business insolvencies could come a deterioration of the banking sector that the Executive wants to avoid at all.
The economic situation is somewhat worse than expected;
hence this inflection in the ministry's discourse.
Now the light is glimpsed at the end of the tunnel: you have to grit your teeth and do what is necessary for a few months, "keep pedaling so that the economy does not fall off the bike", according to the image provided by financial sources.
Calviño continues to maintain his forecasts for this year: growth of 7.2%, which rises to 9.8% if European funds are spent.
But the statistics are organized mirages: the market consensus assumes those numbers are dead and buried, and the Economy reports themselves are becoming increasingly realistic in this regard.
“Some of the sectors hardest hit by the crisis (hotels, transport and recreational services) will not see their situation normalized at the end of the year,” says the 28-page text.
The ministry identifies four risks that jeopardize its forecasts.
The pandemic is the main one, due to the measures to bend the curve, although as the year progresses and the vaccines take effect, things will improve.
Second risk: Spain depends on the improvement of the international environment, and especially "on avoiding a financial crisis" and on the recovery of tourism.
Third: Economy warns of the scars that "a prolonged period of downturn in activity" will leave: this is where it warns of the risk of a premature withdrawal of stimuli and stresses that it plans to activate direct aid to companies that have requested one and the other Once the governor Pablo Hernández de Cos, the unions, the bosses, the PP, Podemos and, in a low voice, even a socialist minister.
And, finally, the impact on GDP will be greatly influenced by European funds, which will provide "a boost to demand of 60,000 million in three years" if everything goes smoothly.
The tone of the economic story is, finally, something different: the accent is a more Keynesian point.
Vice President Calviño defends that, despite the warning call from international organizations that say that Spain has not done enough, the Government has implemented measures "amounting to 20% of GDP", among the guarantees of the ICO, the ERTE, the extraordinary benefits for the self-employed and the Minimum Living Income, among others.
Calviño is committed to "adopting new measures or instruments whenever necessary", despite the fact that his critics argue that he has dragged his feet in various phases of this crisis.
And in a speech at the Círculo de Economía came the expected emphasis on aid to companies: "We are going to increase direct aid to companies and freelancers affected by the pandemic."
The objective is "to alleviate the financial burden of the self-employed and companies, particularly SMEs, and strengthen the solvency of viable businesses."
The devil is in the details: the key will be to determine which are the "viable" companies, and for this the ministry wants to have objective criteria, despite the difficulty of this task.
The Economics document cites a report from the Bank of Spain, which has always defended that the current framework of measures has allowed companies to survive but at the cost of greater debt, unlike what happens in other countries, where loans direct aid has been added.
The central bank estimates a sharp increase in insolvencies, which would reach almost one in five companies if the effects of the
shock
are - as they usually do - long-lasting.
That is the risk: the Economy report itself warns of the dangers if the crisis becomes entrenched, even more so in an economy so marked by job insecurity and specialized in sectors highly sensitive to the pandemic.
That advice from the next Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi, to French President Emmanuel Macron could also make sense for Spain: “Spend your money, friend.
It is time to spend.
Right now.
Later, it will be too late ”.