THE PROJECT

Strategy Spain is a campaign providing a space for reflection and a strategic approach over the medium term for a country that is emerging from one of its longest and deepest economic and social crises. All strategies look to the future. Encouraging robust growth; creating sufficient, quality jobs; reducing inequality and poverty; and facing the real situation of an aging population dependent on immigration requires a joint strategy for Spain and the country’s most important sectors and needs. This is the flexible approach that should be taken to address the challenges and opportunities thatSpain faces in a globalized world where there is increased competition but also a larger number of markets, as well as a constant flow of new technological advances that Spain must promote and adopt.

For this country strategy, we have focused on the twelve main sectors we consider to be key:

• • Innovation, diversification, entrepreneurship
  • Infrastructures and construction
  • Internationalization and foreign action
  • Financial sector
  • Energy
  • Industrial development
  • Telecommunications
  • Politics and the defense industry
  • Politics: institutional reform and issues of territory
  • Tax policy
  • Tourism and the environment
  • Education

Other strategic lines could be added to these: employment policy in a country with an excessively high unemployment rate; the reform of the welfare state to adapt it to a new development model in line with current challenges, the scarcity of resources, the country’s demographics, and so on; and the importance to the economy and labor market of the health-care economy. However, these and other issues require the twelve strategies dealt with in this document to be designed as a priority in order to ensure economic growth and the availability of essential resources.

The project makes use of four platforms:

• Publication of a book setting out the twelve strategies. For each strategy, a question is posed with responses in the form of contributions from experts, stakeholders, and key players in the sector. These point and counterpoint arguments generate a balanced analysis that goes beyond political and electoral debate while also serving to enrich such discussion.
• Organization of a conference to be held in Madrid on February 17, 2016, where the main proponents of each of the strategies will debate the strategic approaches contained in the book.
•  Publication of an English summary of the book in Foreign Policy magazine (FP).
• Online presence on the Strategy Spain website.