Spain in crisis (2007-2014). A view from the Eurotower

This book offers in four volumes a detailed narrative of the crisis in Spain (2007-2014), from the perspective of someone who followed it closely at the European Central Bank. Spain is the center of the narrative, but the book also describes the involvement of the main European institutions and events in other countries in crisis. It therefore presents an overview of the similarities and differences of the crisis in these countries and of the complexities of the institutional framework in which political decisions affecting the entire eurozone were adopted. The four volumes are:

·         Volume I. From the financial crisis to the sovereign debt crisis (2007-April 2010).

·         Volume II. Spain delays being rescued (May 2010-July 2011).

·         Volume III. Rescuing Spain (August 2011-July 2012).

·         Volume IV. Overcoming the crisis (August 2012-2014).

The narrative is organized around a sequence of events which represented milestones in the unfolding of the crisis in different countries: the eruption of the US financial crisis in the summer of 2007; the fall into the Great Recession of the international economy in the Autumn of 2008; the euro sovereign debt crisis in May 2010, when the economy was recovering from the recession; the fall of the Spanish economy into a second recession in 2011 and the reform of its Constitution in the summer; the need to rescue the Spanish financial system in the summer of 2012; the redress of the euro area sovereign debt crisis after the launch of the banking union initiative, and the resolve of the European Central Bank (ECB) to act as a lender of last resort of governments in a fiscal crisis; and finally, the economic recovery by the end of 2013 and in the following years.

This first volume sets the stage of the structural fault lines and cyclical position of the Spanish economy within the euro area for the succession of three related crises: an economic crisis, which started as a normal cyclical downturn; a financial crisis, which developed in parallel and deepened the downturn into a full recession; and a sovereign debt crisis, which was substantially self‑inflicted and compounded the problems of the prior crises, with far reaching social and political consequences.