Regional & Urban Economics

This Working Paper analyzes the changes in the definitive financing of the autonomous communities under the common system from 2002 to 2021.

The crises of the last fifteen years have resulted in a sharp increase in regional debt, which has also conditioned its structure. The FLA provided access to financing at a time when the markets were closed on very favourable terms, and has become the main financing instrument for Regional Governments.

The central government has subsidized the interest payable by the regional governments by guaranteeing them interest rates below what they would have paid had they borrowed on the market. The higher the debt incurred, the larger the transfer from central to regional government.

The national unemployment rate for July was 9.6%, 1.4 percentagepoints lower than last year's July rate (11.0%), being the lowest rate for themonth of July since 2015. On the margin, compared to June of this year, theunemployment rate was down 0.3 percentage points.

Upward revision of the Spanish economy in 2023 to 2.4%, to be led by the Balearic Islands, Canary Islands and Madrid. But growth in 2024 is revised by 0.5 pp (to 2.1%), due to the slowdown in the tourism industry, the rise in interest rates, and the delay in the impact of the NGEU funds.

During the first four months of the year, total tourist spending (domestic and foreign) was 39pp above that observed during the same period of 2019 (5pp more than in the previous four-month period), according to spending data with BBVA credit card.