Political situation

The political form of the Spanish State is a parliamentary monarchy, with King Felipe VI as Head of State and the legislative power residing in the Spanish Parliament, which in turn monitors the executive branch.

Spain is a multi-party country.  Since 1982, there have been mainly governments of the Partido Popular (People’s Party) and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party).  After the elections held on December 2015, new political parties and citizen candidacies emerged, which had already participated in the formation of local and regional governments.  

The latest election results forecast the following distribution:

1. Local elections (May 2019):
   • the Partido Socialista Obrero Español  (Socialist Party) managed to govern 18 out of the 52 provincial capitals
   • 12 were governed by the Partido Popular (Popular Party)
   • 7 by citizen candidacies
   • 3 by the party Ciudadanos (Citizens Party)
   • in the rest of provincial capitals, with the exception of Zamora, governed by Izquierda Unida (United Left), elected mayors belong to regionalist parties.
2. Regional elections (November 2018 in Andalusia, December 2017 in Catalonia and May 2019 in the rest of Autonomous Communities, except for Galicia and the Basque Country, whose electoral process took place in September 2016):  the Partido Popular and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español were able to form governments in most of them by negotiating pacts with emerging political parties such as Podemos and Ciudadanos.

After a parliamentary vote on 7 January 2020, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) has been elected as the new Primer Minister. He has conformed a ministerial cabinet with members of the Socialist party (PSOE) and Unidas-Podemos, which constitute the first coalition government of the current democratic era.

Within the model of representative democracy, the Spanish Parliament is composed of 350 members, who are to represent the citizens who elected them (1985 Electoral Law).  It is currently composed of:

• Partido Socialista Obrero Español, with 120 seats
• Partido Popular, with 89 seats
• Vox, with 52 seats
• Unidas-Podemos (United-We Can) together with other confluences, with 42 seats
• Ciudadanos (Citizens), with 10 seats
• Más País, with 3 seats
• up to nine other parties at the regional level are represented.

Economic situation

The economic situation of a country is related to the financing of its education system, as it determines the application of expansionary or restrictive measures regarding expenditure.

Following a long process of economic expansion after the 1990s crisis, which resulted in growth above the European average, in 2008 the Spanish economy went into a period of stagnation that caused a recession from which the country started to recover in 2014.

Spain's GDP growth (annual %)

Source: Drawn up by Eurydice Spain-Spanish Network for Information on Education (National Centre for Educational Innovation and Research, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training) on the basis of Spain’s National Accounts (National Statistics Institute).

Data before 2008 are not available. Since 2008, GDP has been gradually declining, until the estimate for 2014, which resulted in GDP growth of 1.4%.  In 2018, GDP grew up to 2.6%.

During the years of recession, there was a reduction in public spending on many areas, including education: public expenditure on education was reduced, and so was spending on education in relation to GDP.  In 2018, although the expenditure on education grew in absolute value (50 576 133), its relation to GDP (4.21) remained below the values for 2010.

Public expenditure on education₁ 

¹It refers to the expenditure on education (Liquidated Budgets) of all public administrations, including universities in EUR thousand. 

Source: Drawn up by Eurydice Spain-Spanish Network for Information on Education (National Centre for Educational Innovation and Research, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training) on the basis of Statistics on Public Expenditure on Education of the Statistics Office of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training.

The level of education of the adult population is an indicator for the social and economic development of a country and is closely related to its productive system.

Source: Drawn up by Eurydice Spain-Spanish Network for Information on Education (National Centre for Educational Innovation and Research, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training) on the basis of  the Exploitation of educational variables from the Active Population Survey (National Statistics Institute). Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MEFP).

In Spain, there has been an important variation in the level of training among the population aged 25 to 64 years old:

• in 2002, 57.8% of the population had just attained a level of education lower than the second stage of Secondary Education
• by 2018 that percentage has been reduced to 39.9 %.

Also noteworthy is the increase in people with higher degrees:

• in 2002, it was 24.9%
• in 2018 it reaches 37.3%.