Barcelona’s El Prat airport to be massively expanded, blackout hits the Canaries, Spain now among top five real estate markets for investors and more news on Wednesday June 11th.
US tariff uncertainty hits Spain GDP forecast
Uncertainty from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and the risk they bring a global slowdown, forced Spain’s central bank on Tuesday to downgrade its 2025 economic growth forecast.
It predicted Spain’s economy would grow 2.4 percent this year, down from a previous forecast of 2.7 percent.
The Bank of Spain said a “small slowdown in the pace of GDP growth” was expected over the second half of 2025.
It also lowered its 2026 forecast from 1.9 percent to 1.8 percent.
The recalculations were due to “heightened uncertainty” for the world economy, the bank said.
Markets “remain very vulnerable to possible negative disruptions that could arrive in coming weeks”, it said, noting that dipping confidence would likely have “a negative impact on consumption”.
While the Bank of Spain said that negotiations the United States was holding with major trading partners held out hope of “de-escalation”, it did not rule out “an intensification of the trade war”.
Spain is part of the eurozone.
In its own forecasts given at the end of last year — before Trump took office and subsequently announced the higher US tariffs — the European Commission forecast 2.6 percent growth for Spain this year.
Another power outage in the Canaries
A power outage hit the Spanish island of La Palma on Tuesday, six weeks after a major electricity breakdown disrupted the whole country and neighbouring Portugal.
The Spanish emergency service said the Canary Islands regional government had issued an “emergency plan” to deal with the alert and by 8pm local time the island started to recover its power.
The service said the Endesa power company had blamed a generator breakdown at Breña Alta on the eastern side of the Atlantic island but had not said when power would be restored.
The major outage on April 28th saw internet services cut and trains and key infrastructure brought to a halt for several hours across mainland Spain.
There was a similar blackout for a few hours in La Palma several days after the nationwide blackout.
The Canary archipelago did not lose power on April 28th but its telecommunications were affected by the outage on the mainland.
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Barcelona’s El Prat airport to be massively expanded
The Catalan government and Spain’s airport operator Aena have agreed to carry out the expansion of Barcelona El Prat airport, a project which will cost €3.2 billion.
This will include the extension of the third runway, the renovation of the airport’s two terminals and the creation of a new satellite terminal.
El Prat’s expansion has been been put on hold for several years due to environmental concerns, as turning Barcelona’s airport into a major international hub would involve the encroachment into a protected space called La Ricarda.
According to Catalan president Salvador Illa, the project will be executed with the “highest environmental standards”.
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Spain now among top five real estate markets for investors
Spain has reached a milestone in the global real estate investment landscape, ranking among the five most attractive countries for foreign capital in the sector for the first time.
That’s according to Colliers ‘ most recent report on global capital flows (Global Capital Flows), the country ranks fifth in the world among the most in-demand destinations for commercial real estate investment, climbing three places compared to the first quarter of 2024.
The study highlights that investors are beginning to shift away from the United States as a traditional refuge in the face of an unstable geopolitical environment and that Europe has emerged as the preferred region.
Ranking fifth globally for real estate investment isn’t necessarily an accolade that Spain wants to have right now given the country’s worsening housing crisis.
Additional reporting by AFP.
