Spain’s economy is getting a boost thanks to the country’s attractiveness for remote workers, according to central bank chief Jose Luis Escriva.
There are “a number of elements in the configuration of the European post-Covid economy that help us,” the Bank of Spain governor told Bloomberg TV in an interview. There’s a greater “ability to work now more remotely than in the past, and we are an attractive country for settlement and that’s helping to produce services from Spain.”
Spain regularly features as one of the top destinations for digital nomads, thanks to factors including a new startup law aimed at boosting the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, zero taxation on foreign earned income, affordability, availability of high speed internet, and an environment ideal for technology and innovation.
Still, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision to propose a 100% tax on non-residents from outside the European Union buying houses in Spain — part of a broader attempt to confront a shortage — rattled confidence earlier this year.
Escriva, who took over as Spain’s top central banker in September, also zeroed in on home building, warning of a “potential bottleneck.”
“Housing is becoming a constraint over time, not only from a social dimension, but also from the labor market perspective,” he said in the interview, which was conducted March 14 in Madrid. “The deficit between the creation of homes and the need for houses for foreigners is going to increase a much faster pace that the production of houses.”
Escriva also highlighted that Spain is benefitting from the post-pandemic “shift in consumer preferences” like tourism, saying that it’s difficult to tell which of the trends are structural and which “genuinely transitory.”
Spain’s economy has grown at a far steadier clip than other large European Union nations in recent years but Escriva’s central bank recently raised the question of whether the country can continue to maintain a significantly higher growth rate than its two main trade partners, France and Germany.
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Kriti Gupta and Rodrigo Orihuela, Bloomberg News
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