Get the inside scoop on jobs and careers with Vault career guides. The Vault Guide to Top Spanish Employers is your complete resource to jobs, careers, interviews and recruiting.
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The Vault Guide to Top Spanish Employers Get the inside scoop on jobs and careers with Vault career guides. The Vault Guide to Top Spanish Employers is your complete resource to jobs, careers, interviews and recruiting. |
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The Vault Guide to Top Spanish Employers Spain is a land of great history and of notable economic highs and lows. The southern-European nation experienced rapid growth in the late 1980s and 1990s, after losing out on 30 years of international trade under fascist dictator Francisco Franco. Modern Spain is wealthy and booming, but is not without its problems.
In the Vault Guide to the Top Spanish Employers 2009 Edition, our journalists have researched and profiled the top companies across major industries in Spain. In order to make this information as accessible as possible to students, graduates and young professionals throughout Spain, we have produced a Spanish-language edition in addition to an English-language edition.
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Modern Spain has flourished since Franco's regime ended with his death in 1975. While he was in power, the nation's economy was closed off from the outside world. Strategic sectors, such as energy and telecommunications, were completely nationalised. Basic products were scarce, modernization was dramatically halted and there was a very high rate of unemployment. From 1960 to 1973 approximately 1.5 million Spaniards emigrated to France, Germany and Switzerland. After Franco?s death the situation started to change and by 1982, when the Socialist Party came into power, inflation was finally brought under control and salaries began to rise.
In 1986, Spain entered the European Economic Community (EEC), opening up the country's economy, modernising its industrial base and revising economic legislation. Spain greatly improved infrastructures, reduced public debt, reduced unemployment from 23 percent to ten percent and inflation fell to less than three percent.
The redondeo effect
As a member of the EEC, the euro was implemented as the common currency in Spain on January 1, 2002, a date that most Spanish people will never forget. That day, the euro overthrew 131 years of the peseta's reign and overnight, prices climbed. With the new currency exchanging at the rate of 1 euro = 166.386 pesetas, the "redondeo" or "round-up" effect affected the price of all consumer goods, but unfortunately did not affect salaries. The savings of families were dramatically reduced when converted into euros. That said, clearly things have improved overall since that New Year's day in 2002. The euro has undeniably helped Spain to develop its economy. In 2007, with the EU enlargement to 27 members, Spain slightly exceeded (100.7 percent) the average of the EU gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004.
