La política industrial en Españanacimiento, declive y regeneración, 1951-2021

Abstract

Industrial policy has traditionally aimed at improving the productivity and competitiveness of the industrial sector, mainly manufacturing branches, while promoting economic growth. In the past seventy years in Spain there has not really been an industrial policy based on a proven model, endowed with sufficient resources and a strong institution to coordinate it. Rather, it has been an accommodative and defensive policy in the face of the evolution of the economic cycle and the subsequent economic instability. Until the decade of the 1960s, after the approval of the Stabilization Plan for the Spanish economy, it cannot be considered that there was an industrial policy. The industrial reconversion policies between 1977 and 1993 were not decided upon or intended to promote the modernization of the industrial sector. However, already in the 1990s, industrial promotion began to take on a more active tone. With the arrival of the crisis in 2008, most companies in the industrial sector suffered a sharp slowdown. Even so, except for 2009, exports increased considerably. In February 2019, the 'General Guidelines of the New Spanish Industrial Policy 2030' were presented, framed in the agenda of the new Government for 2018 and aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.