Growth and Macroeconomic Performance in Spain, 1939-93

After presenting trends in aggregate performance within a comparative convergence framework, this paper explores institutional and macroeconomic features as the ultimate explanations of Spain's post-war growth performance. The following main phases are distinguished: the autarchy period (1939-59), the years of growth and delayed reconstruction (1959-75), the relative stagnation of the transition from Franco's dictatorship to democracy (1975-85), which ended with Spain's membership of the European Community and gave way to a short period of accelerating growth which ended abruptly with the recession of the early 1990s.