The Spanish socialists in power: thirteen years of economic policy

This article analyses the economic policy in Spain during thegovernments of the Spanish Socialist Party, the PSOE (1982-96).It considers the different areas of economic policy such asmonetary, exchange-rate, and industrial policy, with specialemphasis on labour policy and welfare state issues. Taking intoaccount the difficult economic situation in 1982, there weresome important advances in social policy and progressive taxationduring the 1980s. However, the main economic objective of the1982 electoral programme, to reduce unemployment, failed: whenthe PSOE came to power, the unemployment rate was 16 per cent,and when it left government the rate was over 22 per cent. Moreover,in the opinion of the authors, the most negative element wasthe push to change the labour market, promoting the causalizationof labour relations, eroding the trade unions and strengtheningthe power of employers.