The evaluation of the demographic dynamics, education
levels, and in foreign trade imbalances shows Portugal’s growing weakness and
dependence relatively to the Spanish state, in a context in which both are
peripheries a Europe suffering from a process of economic and democratic
entropy.
Summary
1 -
People, the most precious capital
1.1 -
Migrants
1.2 -
Knowledge, the great wealth
2 - An
unbalanced and unequal external trade
2.1 -
Iberian countries’ foreign trade profile
3 – Per
capita incomes
We have recently observed the
inequalities between the various countries and their regions since 1990, and
Portugal’s presence among the peripheral areas or those in demographic
regression is very visible in this
study, and
this. Somewhat further back in time we noticed the purchasing
power variations in Portuguese municipalities between 2004 and 2013, which were materialized in the observation of a greater
homogeneity between the various regions, as a result of a more extensive
impoverishment in those municipalities where the income was higher within, of
course, the Portuguese context.
In the present text we will focus on the
inequalities within the Iberian Peninsula by disaggregating, as far as
possible, the scoring elements by the Portuguese regions and the Spanish
state’s autonomous regions.
1 - People, the most precious capital
As we
said recently, the population dynamics is an
indicator of prime relevance to see whether a region is prosperous or evolves
towards relative poverty. In the first case, it is attractive to its
natives and also to people coming from its outside; and, in the second case, it tends to repel its own natives
due to lack of attractiveness, and reduce its own reproduction (birth) rate.
For the sum of the two peninsular
states, demographic evolution is quite different in the present century, as can
be seen in the following table. In Spain, even including the
last years with very low population progression, an annual population growth
close to 1% is observed in the first 15 years of the century, but the same does
not quite happen in Portugal for the whole period. In 2015, meanwhile, INE reported a reduction of the resident
population in 33,492 persons, which prolongs the trend documented
here.
Population
variation (%)
|
|
2001/08
|
2014-15 * / 2008
|
2001 / 14-15 *
|
|
Spain
|
11.6
|
2,3
|
14.1
|
|
Portugal
|
2.6
|
-1.8
|
0.7
|
*
Portugal 2014, Spain 2015 Primary source: Eurostat
The details of these global data from
the Portuguese administrative regions and the Spanish state’s autonomous
regions reveal sharp inequalities.
Firstly, it should be noted that the
variations between 2001 and 2008 in the Centre, Alentejo, and Lisbon’s
metropolitan area are due to profound changes in the composition of the member
territories, and less so to considerations of territorial harmonization, being
more the product of legislative engineering to maximize the flow of Community’s
funds. As can
be noted, those engineering actions did not avoid
population reductions in the Centre, Alentejo, and also in the North, nor
population stagnation in the Lisbon region during the next period, 2008/14-15.
It does follow that variations for the period of 2001/08,
shown in the chart and related to these regions, lack any real meaning.
The
Asturias region is the only one where population decreases are observed in the
two periods considered. With demographic decreases in 2008/14-15, there
are four of the seven regions in Portugal – North, Centre, Lisbon metropolitan
area, and Alentejo – and three Spanish
autonomous regions – Asturias, as already mentioned, and also Castile-Leon and
Galicia. In demographic terms, one can draw
the Iberian periphery in the western range that excludes the Algarve and
Lisbon´s metropolitan area, and proceeds through the northern interior of the
Peninsula.
Primary source: Eurostat
In the
2001/08 period, the Algarve is the only Portuguese region with a meaningful
population growth that, nevertheless, is very distanced from the dynamics
presented by the Spanish archipelagos - the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands
– and even from the eastern Mediterranean regions – the Valencian Community,
Murcia and Catalonia, in addition to the particular case of Madrid. During the same
period, in addition to the population decline in Asturias, there is low growth
in Castilla-Leon, Extremadura, Galicia, and the Basque Country.
In 2008/14-15, in Portugal, population
growth is observed only in the Algarve, Azores and, especially, in Madeira. In the Spanish
state’s autonomous regions there is a general decline of the population
increases, when compared to the previous period, with the exception of the
Ceuta and Melilla African coast’s enclaves.
1.1 - Migrants
By the end of 2014 390,000 foreign
residents were registered in Portugal and 5073 thousands in Spain
corresponding, respectively, to 3.7% and 10.9% of the total population; on the east
coast’s autonomous regions – Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, and the Balearic
Islands – those indicators exceed 14%, the lowest indicators belonging to
Extremadura and Galicia. In Portugal, between
2010 and 2014, there was a retraction in immigrants’ presence and since 2009
for Spain but, compared to 2008, the decrease of the immigrant population is
approximate – 10.5% in Portugal and 13.6% in Spain – their causes resulting
from the more or less explicit interventions by European institutions while
seeking the salvation of the financial system.
The attraction of people coming from
abroad is a symptom of social and economic dynamics,
despite it being known that many immigrants will take the worst paid functions; but, at the
same time, it represents enrichment in culture, creativity, exchanges between
different ways of living and feeling, that correspond to the integration of the
human being in Humanity. It is a social
phenomenon that runs counter to the nationalist, racist, or religious attitudes
with which the neoliberalism crisis has contaminated many people from the
right, to the centre and the "left".
Europe, on the other hand, has
historically always been a crossroads of people of various origins, since
several millennia in the case of the Iberian Peninsula. Already in the
16th century, in 1551, 10% of Lisbon's population was black, a percentage that
rose to 20% in 1578. What remains today, in the population of Madeira, of the
black slaves who were imported to work on sugarcane plantations? They are there, integrated in the veins of the Madeirans.
In Argentina, a study demonstrating high percentages of
Indian and black genetic load, destroyed the “whites’” belief in a country
populated by pure Caucasians. Race, as a
differentiating characteristic of Homo
sapiens is an imbecility, but it is a dangerous one.
The fact that the current levels of
immigrant population are low is another demonstration that Portugal is a
peripheral region that is not even appealing to refugees from the Near East or
Africans. However, the illustrious political class evidences the taste
for gentrification, as a form of parochial modernity and a way to segregate the
indigenous population of those places with touristic "vocation", or
of trying to sell real estate to money-rich foreigners, against the surrender
of their passports[1] [5]. Once
again, the connection between the political and the entrepreneurial classes
favours the show-off "investments", with the utilization of public
funds and continuing the typical mafia-capital laundering, with a special
attraction to the real estate and hotel sectors.
1.2 - Knowledge, the great wealth
The graph below shows, for the 2000/15
period, the population evolution with the highest levels of schooling achieved
for the two Iberian countries and for the EU as a whole.
Levels 0-2 - people who do not have primary education, or who have
reached the primary education or even the first cycle of secondary education
Levels 3 -8 - people
with higher education levels Primary
source - Eurostat
In the
15 years considered, the quota of people with higher qualifications increased
its weight by 14 percentage points (pp) in Portugal, as compared to 12.4 pp in
Spain and 10.1 in the EU as a whole. Spain, which
has maintained within its population a proportion of those with higher
education above that of the EU as a whole is, in this area, far above Portugal,
although this proportion has grown here by a remarkable 160% in the period of
2000/15. In a European comparison, Portugal has
in 2015 a more favourable indicator than countries such as Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, and, particularly, Malta, Italy, Romania and Turkey.
In the
lower qualifications chapter, Portugal no longer has in that level 80.6% of its
population aged 25/64, in 2000, that figure becoming 54.9% in 2015, benefiting
in that period from the physical disappearance of people whose (little)
schooling was obtained during the time of fascism[2]. In comparison
with the other European countries, the Portuguese situation remains very
unfavourable, only countries like Malta and Turkey present worse indicators.
Focusing the analysis on Iberia, it can be observed that in 2000 all
Portuguese regions had, regarding population with higher education, lower
indicators than any of the Spanish state’s autonomous regions, with Lisbon’s
metropolitan area being the region – with 14.3% of people with higher education
– that came closest to the Spanish autonomous regions having the worst
indicators; the remainder
are in much lower tiers. If, in Madeira, only
3.7% of people aged 25-64 years had higher education, the lowest ranked Spanish
region - Castilla-La Mancha had 15.5%, which is a significant difference.
Still in 2000, the autonomies with the most expressive
indicators were the Basque Country and Madrid ... with more than double that of
Lisbon’s metropolitan area which is, by far, the most educated region in
Portugal.
Primary
source - Eurostat
In
2015, despite substantial increases in the relative numbers of the population
with higher education, all regions in Portugal have lower indicators than
any of the Spanish autonomous regions, except for the Lisbon metropolitan
area, this time the last place belongs to the Azores, with only
14.3% of the population with higher education. We highlight the
continuation of positive developments in Spanish autonomous regions, with the
most favourable situations again being for the Basque Country and Madrid with,
respectively, 47.8% and 46.9% of the 25-64 year old population having higher
education.
In
2000, those populations
with lower levels of classification were clearly more representative in Portuguese regions than in the
Spanish autonomies. In the Azores and Madeira this
qualification level encompassed about 87% of the population aged 25/64 and in
the Spanish autonomous regions the worst situations were observed are in
Castile-La Mancha or Extremadura, with indicators of the order of 72%...
which was little more than the 70% of the Lisbon’s metropolitan area, the
Portuguese region
with the smallest quota of this qualification type!
Primary
source - Eurostat
15
years after the reality just described there is a widespread and marked
reduction of this type of population with low levels of education. Azores and
Madeira continue to have the highest rates; and,
with the other Portuguese regions except Lisbon’s metropolitan area, they share with
Extremadura the worst situations in the Peninsula. The Lisbon region continues to stand out within the
Portuguese context, this time with levels similar to those of Castile-Leon and
Catalonia, but clearly behind the autonomies with smaller quotas of people with
low qualifications, Madrid and the Basque Country.
Comparing
with other regions in European countries, we find it interesting to note that
in West London the quota of people with higher education raises to 69.7%, and
other cases can be noted were that indicator is higher than 50% – London,
Brabant/Wallonia (Belgium), Oslo, Helsinki, north-eastern Scotland, East
Scotland and Zurich (50%). Conversely, the cases with the lowest
proportion of low qualifications are recorded in Prague (3.3%), Saxony and
Bratislava, regions that are geographically close to each other.
The
overall low levels of education in Portugal are
evidenced, in European terms, by the relatively narrow portion of people with
25/64 years and higher education, in parallel
with the high weight of those whose instruction level that does not exceed the
first cycle of the secondary.
Even considering the evolution relative to the situation during the
fascism epoch, the kleptocratic regime succeeding it, having as its fulcrum
the PS/PSD party-state, was far from a population qualification
policy aimed at approaching the European or even the Spanish
standards. This despite having had 42 years to do it! It busied itself more with authorizing the setting-up of
"universities" later shown to have behind them ordinary fraudsters,
with increasing fees that penalize poorer families, with frequent and stupid
manoeuvres in the guise of reforms, with a constant persecution of teachers,
with the admission of hundreds of courses with no raison-d’être, with allowing
the interference of corporate institutions (the orders) in limiting
new-licensees’ access to their professions, with the adoption of the commercial
formulas which surround the rules of Bologna, and with public financing of
businesses in the area of education, where the beneficiaries are institutions
linked to the Catholic Church or to mafia groups close to the state-party
itself.
On the
other hand, the Portuguese business structure continues, in the present regime,
to make few demands in terms of qualifications, looking above all for cheap
labour force; the difference from fascist times is the neoliberal modernity
of trying to insert into the school the primacy of technocracy,
entrepreneurship and competition, and disguised forms of effective privatization.
The
improvements observed in the population’s educational standard have not, in
recent years, substantially changed the relative gaps to the Spanish state,
showing that many of the most qualified people opt for emigration – as
suggested by former prime minister Passos, himself a clear case of acquisition
of a diploma that does not correspond to knowledge – or to remain in Portugal
in the context of permanent precariousness and low relative salary. On the other
hand, the existence of a high percentage of people with low qualifications
guarantees to the most developed European countries the labour force supply for
tomato harvesting in France, for cleaning in Switzerland, or construction in Germany, often with the distinct
intermediation of entrepreneurs, heirs of a slave trader vocation, and with the
proliferation of workers’ recruiting and hiring companies – eventually created
"on the spot". For an economic
training where undercapitalized, debt-ridden and dubiously managed SMEs,
accustomed to a high dependence on the State, it is natural that the increase
of the minimum wage from €500 to €530 has to be softened with Social
Security financing, since national entrepreneurship
does not dispense with public funding, even of the current expenses.
Finally,
let us look at the education gaps, in Portugal and Spain, relative to 2015,
when compared with other peripheral countries, especially in Eastern Europe,
some of which have marked poverty levels. On the one
hand, the Iberian countries’ quotas
relative to the lowest qualification levels are clearly superior to
those of the peripheral countries we have selected; in what concerns the weight of people with higher education, four of these
countries have better indicators than Spain, while only four have worse
situations than Portugal, even if only one, Romania, is distanced.
|
Levels 0-2
|
Levels
3-4
|
Levels
5-8
|
|
Levels
0-2
|
Levels
3-4
|
Levels
5-8
|
|
|
Bulgaria
|
18.1
|
54.4
|
27.5
|
Ireland
|
20.2
|
37.0
|
42.8
|
|
Cyprus
|
21.9
|
37.5
|
40.6
|
Latvia
|
9.9
|
58.5
|
31.6
|
|
Croatia
|
16.7
|
60.6
|
22.7
|
Lithuania
|
6.5
|
54.8
|
38.7
|
|
Slovakia
|
8.6
|
70.3
|
21.1
|
Poland
|
9.2
|
63.1
|
27.7
|
|
Slovenia
|
13.2
|
56.6
|
30.2
|
Czech
Republic
|
6.8
|
71.0
|
22.2
|
|
Estonia
|
8.9
|
53.0
|
38.1
|
Romania
|
25.0
|
57.8
|
17.2
|
|
Greece
|
29.6
|
41.3
|
29.1
|
Spain
|
42.6
|
22.3
|
35.1
|
|
Hungary
|
16.8
|
59.0
|
24.2
|
Portugal
|
54.9
|
22.2
|
22.9
|
With
regard to intermediate qualification segments of the population, it is clear
that they are of less relevance in the Iberian countries, where that
situation does not have much demand nor is it the subject of public
profile-raising policies; thus, these intermediate social strata do not
constitute a large central element of fixation or transition of persons.
Iberian companies appear to be divided between a
decreasing but still large segment of the population with low qualifications
and another, more dynamic, segment of people with higher qualifications.
The analysis of these dynamics is complex and we will
not do it here.
In the
previous year, between Portuguese regions and the Spanish state’s autonomous
regions, the relative volume of such intermediate skills level, growing when
compared to 2000, revealed its highest representativeness in the Balearic
Islands (27.4%) and the Lisbon’s metropolitan area (26.3 %), while the lowest
occurred in the Azores (16%), Extremadura (17%) and Madeira (17.8%).
2 - An unbalanced and unequal external
trade
Taking as a base value of 100 the export
or import of goods from Spain and Portugal in 1999, there is some parallelism
in their evolution but with a much enlarged growth of the lines showing the
Spanish foreign trade. While the Spanish exports increase 2.6 times
until 2015, Portuguese’s grows 2.2 times; and in
the import chapter the difference in dynamism is similar – 2.2 times in the
case of Spanish imports and 1.6 in Portuguese’s. An aspect of "internationalization" that gladdens
the fanatics of GDP growth anchored in exports and reduction of labour income.
These differences are explicitly seen in
the following graph. In Portugal there is great parallelism between
the exports and imports evolution up to 2010, as a consequence of the sharp
growth of exports, following the fall in 2009 and the stagnation of imports,
subsequent to the austerity and poverty that is ravaging the country. In Spain, the exports evolve in a parallel way to the
Portuguese one, but show more dynamism after 2011; as far as Spanish imports are concerned there is also
parallelism, but with more accelerated rates, especially in 2002/07, a period
which in Portugal spanned the economic activity decrease that begun in the last
years of the Guterres government and continued in the Durão/Santana consulates.
Primary
source - Eurostat
As is easily observed by the troubled
nationalists, nothing here can be related to the advent of the euro. Distinct
currencies are transaction enhancements, with fluctuating exchange rates,
according to the "market", purchase charges and a sharp competition
between currencies for the attraction of "investors"; and, everything points to it, a large palette of national
currencies in Europe would not have prevented the subprime crisis,
Lehman's failure, nor the global recession that more or less still affects all
countries, including Great Britain which kept its pound, or China which, as an
engine of the global economy, has shown serious performance problems.
These imports were induced by the
stopping of the real estate folly and construction in both Iberian countries and
the austerity that accompanied the restructuring of the financial system in
each of them – much more drawn out in Portugal. The
structural difficulties generated a huge unemployment, reduced incomes, hence
the reduction in consumption or investment. The
evolution of the Portuguese and Spanish trade balances shows this reality,
which also contradicts the hallucinations of seeing the euro as the cause of
all evils, thus concealing the real causes – the public and private debts and
the inherent inequalities of capitalism which, in Europe, builds a Centre and
peripheries.
Primary
source - Eurostat
The evolution of the trade deficit
(imports - exports) between the two countries provides a robust parallel, but
with the Portuguese indicator systematically higher, returning in 2015 to
levels close to those of 1999 (2.4 times higher than the one observed in
Spain).
Some say that the Portuguese consume
beyond their means[3] and
thus they import many goods. The past few years reveal,
precisely, that it is not excessive consumption – sinful consumption, to use a
term of Dijsselbloem’s liking – but the absence of a dynamic, creative,
capitalized and with good management skills entrepreneur class, which
historically has been unable
to invest. However
it retains some €70000 M in offshores, while waiting for the public
treasury to recapitalize the banks, bankrupt or swollen with NPEs.
Investment in Portugal (GFCF) has EU’s
third lowest mark for the period of 2010/15 (16.6% of GDP), only exceeding
Britain (16.4%), Cyprus (15.8%), and the inevitable Greece (13.5%).
2.1 - The external trade profile of the
Iberian countries
|
Portugal
|
Spain
|
||||||
|
Destinations with more than 5% of the
total
|
|||||||
|
|
2001
|
2008
|
2015
|
|
2001
|
2008
|
2015
|
|
GERMANY
|
19.0
|
12.8
|
11.8
|
GERMANY
|
11.9
|
10.6
|
10.9
|
|
SPAIN
|
19.3
|
27.9
|
25.0
|
ITALY
|
9.0
|
8.1
|
7.3
|
|
FRANCE
|
12.7
|
11.8
|
12.1
|
FRANCE
|
19.6
|
18.4
|
15.5
|
|
GREAT BRITAIN
|
10.2
|
5.5
|
6.7
|
GREAT BRITAIN
|
9.0
|
7.1
|
7.3
|
|
USA
|
5.7
|
|
5.2
|
PORTUGAL
|
10.2
|
9.1
|
7.0
|
|
ANGOLA
|
|
5.8
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BELGIUM
|
5.3
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Degree of concentration
|
72.3
|
63.7
|
60.9
|
|
59.7
|
53.4
|
48.0
|
Primary
source - Eurostat
As a rule, the five countries that make
up more than 5% of the total Portuguese exports show a very high concentration,
a large potential vulnerability, as it was seen in the case of Angola, or
Brazil and Venezuela, although in the latter cases the combined exports
slightly exceeded 1.4% of the 2015 total. On the other hand, there is a clear
loss of the relative importance of sales to Germany and the Great Britain and a
large increase in the representativeness of Spain, whose imports from Portugal
represent 8.4% of the Portuguese GDP, revealing the growing dependence of
Portuguese importers from beyond Caia.
The concentration of exports, using the
same model, also occurs in Spain, where there is also an evolution similar to
the Portuguese one, but much smaller dependence degrees. The relative
importance of Spanish exports to Germany remains the same, contrary to what
happened in Portugal, and it decreases regarding the other four destinations.
For its part, the Spanish exports to Portugal have a much
lower emphasis than the Portuguese exports to Spain which, while revealing the
natural exchanges between the two Iberian countries, evidences very distinct
degrees of dependence due to the difference in size of the weight in exports,
as well as the verified evolution; Spain
increases in importance to Portuguese exports and Portugal decreases its
relevance for Spanish exports. Given the contiguity of the two countries, this shows the ease
with which Portuguese exports to Spain develop, and the decreasing relevance of
Portugal to Spanish exporters. This imbalance is
one of the characteristics that define relations between centres and
peripheries, where the central economies place their products in a greater
diversity of destinations and in more distant ones. Portugal, at the light of the data of its exports, presents
itself as a peripheral economy within Iberia[4].
Imports
(% of total)
|
Portugal
|
Spain
|
||||||
|
Provenances with more than 5% of the
total
|
|||||||
|
|
2001
|
2008
|
2015
|
|
2001
|
2008
|
2015
|
|
GERMANY
|
13.8
|
13.4
|
12.9
|
GERMANY
|
16.4
|
14.7
|
14.3
|
|
SPAIN
|
27.4
|
30.8
|
32.9
|
CHINA
|
|
6.0
|
7.0
|
|
FRANCE
|
10.2
|
8.1
|
7.4
|
FRANCE
|
17.6
|
12.0
|
11.6
|
|
GREAT BRITAIN
|
5.0
|
|
|
GREAT BRITAIN
|
7.1
|
|
|
|
ITALY
|
6.8
|
5.4
|
5.4
|
ITALY
|
9.1
|
8.0
|
6.5
|
|
NETHERLANDS
|
|
|
5.1
|
NETHERLANDS
|
|
|
5.0
|
|
Degree of concentration
|
63.2
|
57.7
|
63.7
|
Degree of concentration
|
50.2
|
40.7
|
44.4
|
|
|
|
|
|
PORTUGAL
|
2.8
|
3,4
|
3.9
|
Primary source - Eurostat
As already pointed out for exports,
Portuguese imports are also very concentrated and in a close geographical area,
in Europe, and with a relatively constant level of concentration, unlike Spain,
and which is reduced when compared with 2001. It is, thus,
evident that Portugal is a regional economy
with commercial relations concentrated in the western part of Europe.
In the area of imports, Spain's role
as supplier increases – with around a third of the total in 2015 – to the
detriment of France and Great Britain, with Italy emerging as unvarying, unlike
in the exports’ case.
In what regards Spain, the concentration
level is lower than in Portugal, the majority of the importing countries
contributing to that effect, offset by the presence of China which occupies the
third place among Spain’s suppliers, surpassing Italy. It should also
be noted that no country has, within the Spanish imports, the same weight that
Spain represents among Portuguese suppliers. Note
that although the relative importance of Portugal, as the neighbouring country
supplier, increases, this importance does not go beyond 3.9% in 2015 which once again shows Portugal’s more peripheral position within the Peninsula.
The Iberian countries’ trade balances
are patently negative (imports > exports), us having observed above their
evolutions as a percentage of GDP. In numerical
terms, these deficits are as follows, for the years we have been using for
comparison:
€ Millions
|
|
2001
|
2008
|
2015
|
|
Spain
|
-43133
|
-95710
|
-26933
|
|
·
per inhabitant (€)
|
-1056
|
-2084
|
-578
|
|
Portugal
|
- 17176
|
-25347
|
-10304
|
|
·
per inhabitant (€)
|
- 1659
|
- 2386
|
- 988
|
Primary source - Eurostat
External deficits grow substantially between
2001 and 2008 declining thereafter, even more markedly in 2015 as a consequence
of economic stagnation, rising unemployment, and austerity. The deficit per
capita has a similar evolution but, always being much higher in Portugal than
in Spain, shows the weakness of the Portuguese economic structure; in approximate terms, the trade deficit per inhabitant in
Portugal corresponded to about four times the minimum wage in 2001, almost five
in 2008, and less than two in the previous year.
In the Portuguese case, contributing to
the deficit are, in particular, the trade with Spain, Germany, Italy and the
Netherlands, with values greater than 1000 M € in 2015. For the same year, the
leading Spanish deficits occur, in order of size, regarding China, Germany, and
the Netherlands, with figures of 14.6, 12.7 and 6.1 billion euros.
With regard to the major Portuguese
surpluses, (each with about 1500 million euros) in 2015, they are obtained in
the relationships with the US, France, and Britain. As for Spain,
the main positive balances result from exchanges with Portugal, France, and
Great Britain, with gains of 6.8, 6.7 and 5.0 billion euros, respectively.
About 70% of the Portuguese trade
deficit results from the imbalance of trade with Spain, a country where the sum
of the imbalances with China and Germany is equivalent to its total deficit in
2015. On the other hand, the Spanish trade surplus with Portugal is equivalent
to 25% of the 26.9 billion euros of the total deficit. This means
that Portugal is a subsidiary economy for the Spanish productive structure and
where it gathers a substantial part of the revenues that finance
imports.
3 – Per capita incomes
Let us see next how per capita income in
the Iberian Peninsula has evolved between 2001 and 2014 (or 2015 in the case of
Spanish state’s autonomous regions), separating this time span into two
periods: 2001/08 and 2008/15.
Primary
source - Eurostat
The period until the beginning of the
financial crisis and the neoliberal model, and the one that followed it, which
is dragging itself on with no real solutions other than the dumping of the
model‘s continuity costs on the population, especially on workers, young
people, on the designated 99%, are both well defined. What is scarier
is that, contrary to other times of capitalism crisis, there is no real
resistance; there is not even a set of political practices that challenge the
power of capital, which renders quite easy the management of the national
political classes and the Community’s high bureaucracy. And there is also no political theory that inscribes tactical
or strategic mobilizing goals, confronting neoliberal managers with a
conservative, bureaucratic "left," vaguely defending a discredited
socialist model that has never gone beyond state capitalism, while clinging
like ticks to the neoliberal’s power budgets.
In the first period, Portuguese regions
show slightly higher growth rates than those observed for Spanish autonomous
regions and, in the second one, of crisis and austerity, there are still cases
of a slight rise in the Portuguese per capita income, with the exceptions of
the Algarve and Madeira. This contrasts with the Spanish state’s
autonomous regions, all of which have a decrease in their per capita incomes in
2008/14.
One may think that this Portuguese
reality is virtuous, but the developments that follow will show a much darker
situation. The ratio between the richest region of the peninsula and the
poorest region was of 2.5 in 2001 and 2005, and was reduced to 2.3 in 2014/15,
although this decrease has little significance, as can be seen in the following
table.
GDP per capita (€)
|
|
2001
|
2008
|
2014/15
|
|||
|
1
|
Com. Madrid
|
23016
|
Com. Madrid
|
32152
|
Com. Madrid
|
31812
|
|
2
|
Navarra
|
21484
|
Basque country
|
31243
|
Basque country
|
30459
|
|
3
|
Baleares
|
21256
|
Navarra
|
30128
|
Navarra
|
28682
|
|
4
|
Basque country
|
20932
|
Catalonia
|
28332
|
Catalonia
|
27663
|
|
5
|
Catalonia
|
20899
|
Aragon
|
26650
|
Aragon
|
25552
|
|
6
|
La Rioja
|
18919
|
La Rioja
|
25986
|
La Rioja
|
25507
|
|
7
|
Aragon
|
17917
|
Baleares
|
25717
|
Baleares
|
24394
|
|
8
|
Canary Islands
|
16759
|
Cantabria
|
22850
|
Lisbon / Tagus Valley
|
22793
|
|
9
|
Com. Valencia
|
16461
|
Lisbon / Tagus Valley
|
22710
|
Castile-Leon
|
21922
|
|
10
|
Cantabria
|
16095
|
Castile-Leon
|
22421
|
Cantabria
|
20847
|
|
11
|
Lisbon / Tagus Valley
|
15833
|
Asturias
|
22336
|
Asturias
|
20675
|
|
12
|
Castile-Leon
|
15441
|
Com. Valencia
|
21878
|
Com. Valencia
|
20586
|
|
13
|
Ceuta
|
14753
|
wood
|
21392
|
Galicia
|
20431
|
|
14
|
Asturias
|
14468
|
Galicia
|
21226
|
Canary Islands
|
19900
|
|
15
|
Melilla
|
14425
|
Canary Islands
|
21186
|
Ceuta
|
19399
|
|
16
|
Murcia
|
14336
|
Ceuta
|
20765
|
Murcia
|
18929
|
|
17
|
Castile - La Mancha
|
13425
|
Murcia
|
20354
|
Castile - La Mancha
|
18354
|
|
18
|
wood
|
13410
|
Castile - La Mancha
|
19697
|
Andalusia
|
17263
|
|
19
|
Galicia
|
13341
|
Melilla
|
19546
|
Melilla
|
17173
|
|
20
|
Andalusia
|
12735
|
Andalusia
|
18625
|
Algarve
|
16628
|
|
21
|
Algarve
|
12390
|
Algarve
|
17852
|
Extremadura
|
16166
|
|
22
|
Extremadura
|
10851
|
Extremadura
|
16633
|
Madeira
|
15710
|
|
23
|
Centre
|
9683
|
Azores
|
15099
|
Azores
|
15111
|
|
24
|
Alentejo
|
9619
|
Alentejo
|
14847
|
Alentejo
|
15039
|
|
25
|
North
|
9557
|
Centre
|
13289
|
Centre
|
14392
|
|
26
|
Azores
|
9396
|
North
|
12951
|
North
|
13858
|
Source: INE – Iberian Peninsula in Numbers
In the Iberian regions’ hierarchy there are always
four Portuguese regions in the last places, with the increase in Azores’ position
and the degrading of the Centre and North ones deserving highlighting, the
latter two being the regions with the greatest export tendency which shows the
weaknesses of a model based on low wages. It should also be noted the big changes
in Madeira, within the same hierarchy, and the improvement of Lisbon and Tagus
Valley which, again, demonstrates that it is the focus for wealth concentration
in Portugal, the mirror for the macrocephaly which articulates with the
desertification of large part of the territory. Despite that improvement, the
GDP per capita in the Lisbon region does not surpass, in 2015, 71,6% of the one
observed for Madrid, the richest region in the Peninsula.
This situation demonstrates that where the income is
lower the compression margin is smaller than that of the richest regions. This
was perfectly evident in the purchasing power decreases observed in Portugal
between 2004 and 2013, which we
studied in good time.
As can be seen, all regions of the Spanish state
reduce their per capita levels, the same did not happen in Portugal where, more
to the point, it can be said they stabilized in 2014 slightly above the 2008
values. The increase of the GDP per capita in the Lisbon region during the
period of 2001/08 allowed it to surpass the Canary Islands and the Valencian
Community and, in the last period, to be ahead of Cantabria.
There are some variations in the top places amongst
the Spanish autonomous regions, although Madrid is always in the first place in
those points in time we have selected. Those changes, however, do stabilize in
2008 and 2015 relatively to 2001, with obvious hierarchy decreases of the
Balearic Islands and the rise to second place of the Basque Country. For its part, the Extremadura is always
the Spanish state’s region with the smallest GDP per capita and has been
narrowing the gap with the Algarve, having surpassed Madeira in 2014/15.
This succinct narrative showcases Portugal as the most
peripheral region within Iberia, where the Lisbon region appears as a true
island, with GDP per capita indicators that clearly differentiate it from the
rest of the country. Allowing for the evident difference in GDP per capita, that periphery is extended in a mitigated
form throughout the whole Spanish state’s south (where Extremadura, Andalucía, Murcia and Castile-La Mancha can be included) and also to
Galicia.
This and other texts at:
[1] A policy that came to be shown to be
drowning in corruption, with the explicit involvement of PSD mandarins, while
leaving unscathed, once more, its promotor, Portas.
[2] Ideologically, Salazar’s rural directive
defended a bent and obedient agriculture-working population with little need
for school education; and in what concerns women the dictator even defended
that if they knew how to read and write they could use that knowledge to send
notes to their sweethearts… Salazar did not defend knowledge proliferation,
fearing “subversion” and, above all, wanted cheap labour force to serve
Portuguese entrepreneurs, scarce in technology and not very demanding regarding
qualifications, at a time when foreign investment had very little expression.
[3]
Labour income, in
2000, corresponded to 48% of the GDP, was worth 47% in 2008 and only 43% in
2015
[4]
Regarding foreign
investment in Portugal, Spain has a share of 24.9% in 2012, only topped by
Holland, as can be seen here http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2014/01/investimento-estrangeiro-em-portugal.html
