Word: spain
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Until recently, Spain was one of the European Union's great success stories. In 1992, Spain's per capita GDP was 70% of the E.U. average; by 2006 it was 90% of that of the 15 pre-2004 members. Growth helped cut unemployment, which had hovered near 20% for decades, to 8.3% in 2007, and drew hundreds of thousands of immigrants to a country that had, in the '50s and '60s, sent its own desperate citizens abroad. (Read: "Bitter Harvest in Spain's Olive Country...
...dictatorship receded, new generations born under democracy embraced rising expectations, both material (by 2007, 81% of families owned their own home and 21% had a second one) and professional. "That was the major social change of the transition," says Cristina Bermejo, director of youth issues for the Workers' Commission, Spain's largest union. "Illiteracy had been a big problem in Spain since the civil war. But in the '70s and '80s, there was a reaction against it. Suddenly everyone, even factory workers, expected their kids to go to university and do better than they...
...idea of the changes that occurred in Spain, it's worth taking a look at Vigo, a city of 300,000 in the northwestern region of Galicia. Unlike other Spanish cities with their booming tourism and service industries, Vigo is proudly working class. But even here, on the docks and in the factories, the past few decades have brought unprecedented prosperity...
Spending Cuts Then came Spain's property crash and the financial turmoil in the U.S., which tipped the world into recession. On a recent Friday, González's studio was empty. There is at least one boarded-up storefront on every block of the street where it is located. Cafés, children's boutiques, legal offices, furniture stores, language schools - the recession has closed them all. "I'm getting by on piercings," says González with a shrug. "They're a lot cheaper, so the kids can still get enough money to pay for them...
Like Ireland, which for more than a decade boasted growth rates three times the E.U. average, Spain's once booming economy has been hit especially hard by the downturn. Spain's GDP is expected to shrink 1.6% in 2009, and the first place that young people feel the contraction is in their purchasing power. "Kids today have grown up with consumerist expectations and feel frustrated when they can't maintain them," says Alberto Saco, sociologist at the University of Vigo. "But more frustrating is what is happening to their expectations about work and housing." (Read: "Ireland's Economy: Celtic Crunch...