Spanish GDP plummeted 11% the year of the pandemic
The fall in the economy is the largest ever recorded and far exceeds that of the financial crisis
The coronavirus crisis led the Spanish economy to record a historic decline in Spanish gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 of 11%, although the fourth quarter of the year registered a quarterly growth of 0.4%, according to advanced data released on Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE)
So far, since records exist, the largest annual decline in GDP had been in 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis, with a decline of 3.8%. However, the coronavirus crisis has broken all records and 2020 has been the worst year for GDP since records began in 1970. It is also the first annual contraction of the economy since 2013, when it fell by 1.4%. Last year the Spanish economy grew by 2%.
According to the INE data preview, demand subtracted 9 points from GDP in 2020, a sign that domestic consumption plummeted; while the negative contribution of external demand was 1.9 points. At current prices, GDP in 2020 stood at €1,119,976m, 10% less than in 2019.
The decline could be higher
The INE explains that for various reasons related to the timing and availability of some of the sources used in the last quarter of the year, the volume of information advanced in this Friday's data has been lower than on previous occasions. This fact, coupled with the difficulty posed by the big changes covid-19 has brought, "leads us to think that future revisions of the results published today may be of a larger magnitude than usual" .
GDP in the fourth quarter fell by 9.1% compared to the same quarter of 2019.