Strength of Spanish Economy Shown by Increase in Car Sales and Decrease in Illegal Downloads

Strength of Spanish Economy Shown by Increase in Car Sales and Decrease in Illegal Downloads

There was a time during the credit crunch of 2008-2012 that living in Spain was the hotbed of illegal downloads in Europe. From music and films to unlicensed software, Spaniards who found themselves strapped for cash would use internet services to get their hands on the content they couldn’t afford or just didn’t want to pay for.

Spain wasn’t the only country this trend hit, but it certainly became the leader. Things have changed now, however. As the Spanish economy has picked up, and there are affordable streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix opening their doors, the amount of illegal content downloaded in Spain has tanked.

A survey of over 4,000 Spanish internet users from consultancy firm Gfk shows that piracy has hit a ten-year low in the country. Around half of the people surveyed admitted to still illegally downloading content, saying that they feel they can get anything they want online for free because they pay for their internet connection.

A similar amount of people did say that they would pay for the content if it was cheaper.

The survey suggested that content piracy accounted for around €1.8 billion in lost earnings during 2016. If all the content that was illegally downloaded was paid for legally, then it would have supported 21,000 jobs in Spain alone according to the consultancy firm.

An area of the Spanish economy that is certainly generating jobs is the automotive industry, which kicked off the year to a great start with 7.9% more cars sold in Spain for the first quarter of 2017, compared to the first quarter of 2016.

Car sales – much like property sales – are an accurate sign of how the economy is performing. An increase in sales for cars or homes is always a cause for celebration.

The Spanish Association of Automobiles and Trucks (ANFAC) calculated some 307,911 cars were sold during the first quarter of 2017 in Spain. Malaga topped the charts in Andalucía, with 10,270 new cars sold, followed by Seville with 9,778 cars sold.

Decrease in the growth of Spanish population.

Decrease in the growth of Spanish population.

Data from INE (National Statistics Institute) published last year showed that there was more deaths than births in the first half of the year for the first time over 10 years.

The number of deaths surpassed the figure of births by 19.000 and not since the Spanish civil war of 36-39 and previously of the pandemic of 1918 from the Spanish flu has the country ever seen this increase.

Other nations in Europe for example Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands have seen a decrease over the years in the population due to age. But due to Spain´s catholic religion in Spain and the belief in big families was up to recently the reason that Spain’s birth rate exceeded its death rate.

As the world has become easier to travel and the cost of living in Spain is raising, the next generation continues to increase more than the average family wage. More people are opting to have less children in Spain or putting off having them till later in life, that way giving people more time and finances to live in other countries and to travel around the world.

Due to Spain’s mass unemployment many of the younger generation left the country between 2012-2014, looking for better work positions in Europe.

Spain´s population currently is around 46 million, but is due to decrease around 1 million by 2030 and is estimated to decrease further by 2060 to around 40 million.

Spain is also ageing also, the populations average age is 43.2 this would make it the 10^th oldest in the world. There is an expectation that this will rise to 50.1 by 2030. This would put Spain as the 4^th oldest in the worlds table.

Spain is known as one of the world countries where its population has a longer life expectancy and also their love of children is also well known but the country. So if you would like to do your part and help out, think about moving to Spain while you are still young and help the ageing population.