Photo: Riccardo/Pexels
Spain has become Europe’s buzziest economy, fueled in part by the government’s strikingly different approach to migration. “Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country,” said prime minister Pedro Sánchez. In a country whose birthrate was among the lowest in the EU, migration was the only realistic way to grow the economy and sustain the welfare state. A record 94 million tourists visited Spain last year, creating jobs in hotels, restaurants and other tourist services, and high rates of migration pushed unemployment levels to their lowest since 2008. Of 468,000 jobs created last year, roughly 409,000 were filled by migrants or people with dual nationality. Spain’s abundance of wind and solar renewables has kept energy relatively cheap while EU Covid recovery funds bolstered the economy and the government ran a deficit to fund raising pensions and public sector hiring.
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