More car sales, more multimillionaires: what Spain’s economic upturn looks like

Spain has always been a haven for the super rich, while the economic recovery means more money in the pockets of average Spaniards.

The darkest days of the Spanish economic crisis are generally accepted to have stretched from 2009 to 2013. After the boom post-Millennium years, when credit was easy, wages were rising and the future seemed bright, this fall from grace was even harder to take for a nation finally enjoying the good times a generation after Franco’s dictatorship came to an end…

And the lessons learned from the country’s double-dip recession seem to have steered Spain on to a path of growth. Economists across the continent expect the country to be one of the fastest-growing in the Eurozone this year and into next, with strong performance indicators across much of the industries Spain does best: property, tourism, manufacturing and agricultural exports.

This week, two additional metrics delivered equally positive news, with official data showing that Spain’s vehicle sales sector is on the up, as are the number of multimillionaires in the country.

Car sales are a good indicator of public confidence in a country’s economy. When things are not looking so rosy – jobs may be insecure or scarce, pay might be low, and credit hard to come by – car sales always fall. A vehicle is a luxury that many families, when squeezed, can do without. But as things pick up, an increase in vehicle sales follows swiftly after.

Statistics published last week by Spain’s national association of car salesmen, GANVAM, show that between January and August some 1.29 million vehicles have been sold in the country, which represents a 12.8% increase on the same period last year. The signs are strong that Spain could break the two million sales barrier this year, for the first time in more than seven years.

Newer cars are in demand, too, the data shows, with vehicles less than three years old comprising 31% of those sales.

Additional data from the Spanish tax agency has revealed that the number of people in Spain declaring assets worth more than €30 million last year rose 8% on the previous year, which is another strong indicator of a recovering economy.