But as Spain looks back at its transition to democracy five decades ago, leaders such as de la Torre warn that low productivity and a new housing crisis could overshadow its success. According to the OECD, Spain\u2019s productivity growth fell from 2.5 per cent in the 1980s to 1.2 per cent in the 2010s, and has deteriorated both in absolute terms and relative to other OECD countries from above-average in 1991 to below-average in 2021. <\/p>\n
Housing costs have risen almost 50 per cent faster than youth wages since 2014, and the average property rental is now equal to more than 90 per cent of a young worker\u2019s income. The Bank of Spain recently declared that the country had a shortfall of 700,000 houses.<\/p>\n
Luis Garicano, a professor of public policy at the London School of Economics, said that living standards had \u201cstagnated\u201d since 2007 and the country was falling behind European averages, for example, in GDP per capita.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story [since Franco\u2019s death] is one of high expectations that end in disappointment,\u201d Garicano, a former centre-right Spanish MEP, said. \u201cIt starts with rapid convergence, not just towards Europe but also the US, but then falls behind. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have stagnation, the collapse of the prospects of young Spaniards who have such low salaries they can\u2019t afford housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That gloomy picture is not immediately evident in Malaga, Spain\u2019s sixth city. Bustling and spruced up, the \u201cempire of light\u201d, as the philosopher Jos\u00e9 Ortega y Gasset described it in 1910, is a far cry from the shabby former industrial city of 25 years ago, when tourists bypassed it and headed straight to the Costa del Sol\u2019s resorts.<\/p>\n
\u2022 50 years after Franco\u2019s death, is Spain\u2019s democracy in danger?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n De la Torre has overseen the city\u2019s transformation into a tourist destination itself, the growth of its tech industry and the opening of a handful of art museums, including one dedicated to Pablo Picasso, who was born in the city, and an outpost of Paris\u2019s Pompidou Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n Antonio Banderas, the actor, has returned to his home town to open a theatre, and is an enthusiastic celebrant of another of Malaga\u2019s great draws \u2014 its well-marketed Easter religious processions. <\/p>\n Highlighting the great change that Spain has undergone, de la Torre described the state of Malaga on Franco\u2019s death on November 20, 1975. He said: \u201cIt was a very run-down historic centre with a feeling of abandonment, not attractive to live in. We had no tourist appeal and the world was suffering an oil crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Recalling the repressive atmosphere, he pointed to the ban on works by the renowned British hispanist Gerald Brenan, who is buried in the city\u2019s English Cemetery. \u201cEven though he wrote some of them in Malaga [during the dictatorship], they were forbidden,\u201d he said. \u201cSpain was politically and economically distant from Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n Francisco de la Torre<\/p>\n ALEX ZEA\/EUROPA PRESS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Franco<\/a> started to open the economy, notably tourism, after his devastating autarky policy ended in 1959. But the \u201cinternationalisation\u201d of the country\u2019s economy after his death, particularly joining the EU and the euro, led to a massive leap in prosperity, said Raymond Torres, the director for macroeconomic analysis at Funcas, an economics think tank.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cExports of goods and services represented about 12 per cent of GDP in 1975. That has increased almost continuously to around 40 per cent of GDP today.\u201d<\/p>\n Fringed with palm trees and backed by a Moorish castle, Malaga\u2019s baroque revival city hall encapsulates the country\u2019s romantic image. But its mayor\u2019s career exemplifies the development of modern Spain. As an official under Franco, he was a founding member of the city\u2019s university, which is now a major partner with the technology park that he also helped to establish in 1992. <\/p>\n As Spain tries to diversify away from a heavy reliance on tourism, which accounts for 13 per cent of GDP, Malaga TechPark has become a centre of the country\u2019s burgeoning industry. Built on farmland ten miles outside the city, it has attracted companies such as Accenture and Ericsson. The Belgium-based research & development giant Imec is planning a \u20ac600 million semiconductor facility in the park.<\/p>\n Until recently tourism had represented about 80 per cent of the city\u2019s economy. Experts estimate that the tech industry now accounts for nearly a third. \u201cGoogle\u2019s new cybersecurity centre and Vodafone\u2019s AI development centre in Malaga<\/a> have suddenly put a relatively small Mediterranean city on the global stage,\u201d said Felipe Romero, the park\u2019s general manager.<\/p>\n The park is a source of optimism in Spain but Ezequiel Navarro, a leading tech businessman, said that the sector was underrepresented in the country\u2019s economy. \u201cWe are still a country of users and not makers,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Torres, the think tank analyst, said that in addition to low productivity there was insufficient domestic investment to sustain growth, a lack of housing investment and a need for education reforms. <\/p>\n \u201cLots of young Spanish people leave the country because they find higher wages elsewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cUnemployment among tertiary education graduates is much higher than anywhere else [in Europe]. That\u2019s really not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n So far this year, 463,000 immigrants have entered Spain and 183,000 people have emigrated, Torres said.<\/p>\n![\"Mayor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/37110ab3-44f2-42d0-a637-45c7c9b14a9b.jpg\")
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