In the time interval marked by the end of dictatorship and the beginning of democracy occurred a series of events in the international sphere that restructured the conditions of access and production of the real estate market. This new global architecture redesigned the economy and politics within each country. In the case of Spain, it reinforced the internal housing policies that had begun under Franco.
On one hand, the collapse of the communist bloc radically transformed the political landscape. Since the late 1960s, we have witnessed a gradual withdrawal of the State as a provider of basic goods and services for the benefit of private initiative. This progressive withdrawal of public action accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s, in an international context marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the hegemony of neoliberal dogma as a guiding principle of politics. And this new paradigm recast the central role in the economy that until then had been the State's, and did so by reducing its presence to a minimum and giving the State a few distinct functions. This process resulted in a withdrawal of investment from the State, in a mutilation of the existing tools and mechanisms of public intervention and in the outsourcing of its functions. Thus, the market displaced the State as a producer of goods and basic services, and the Administration remained relegated to the background. From then on, the state began to act as a line of transmission for the interests of private initiative.
On the other hand, the financial innovations and technological advances that took place during the last quarter of the 20th century made possible the integration of national markets into a single global economy. The gradual insertion of Spain in the circuit of capital in the global economy provoked the transition to an economy increasingly financialised and entrenched in the logic and language of the global markets of capital. Spain's entrance into the European Union brought business opportunity to international capital eager to find new markets. Europe meant a seal of guarantee, and this "security" made the Spanish territory a magnet for foreign investment. Later, the introduction of the Euro resulted in an avalanche of credit that began to flow from Frankfurt to Madrid and reached homes across the country in the form of mortgages.
But if it is true that the arrival of the euro flooded the credit economy, lowered the cost of borrowing to levels never before seen, and facilitated borrowing by individuals and companies, it is also true that excess liquidity and low interest rates were a common denominator of other euro-zone economies, which have the same composition. Thus, access to cheap credit was limited to providing the conditions of possibility for the indebtedness. Call it a necessary, but not sufficient condition, to explain the peculiarity of the Spanish case.
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