The signs of the recovery of the Spanish economy continue, after an extremely difficult year. Spanish industrial production soared in the month of April, rising by 50.3% on the same month of 2020, the largest rise in the series on record, which began to be recorded in 1975. 

A significant improvement compared with the appalling figures from April last year, when the hibernation of the economy and the lockdown caused by Covid-19 sunk industrial production levels to all-time lows, with a drop of 34%. 

This is reflected in the data published today, Monday 7 June, by the National Statistics Institute (Spanish acronym: INE) in its industrial production index (IPI) for April, which shows the consolidation of the recovery that began in March (up 15.4%) following the falls in January (down 7.1%) and February (down 3.6%). In fact, the figure for this month beats the previous all-time record of 17.8% recorded in April 1997.

When seasonally-adjusted and corrected for the calendar effect, industrial production recorded a new record year-on-year rise of 48.2%, 35.3 percentage points higher than the figure for the previous month. In month-on-month terms (April on March), and within the corrected series, industrial production rose by 1.2%, its highest month-on-month rise since last July.

All the industrial sectors considerably increased their production levels, particularly consumer durables (up 229.7%) and capital equipment (up 120.4%), while intermediate goods improved by 61.3%, non-durable goods by 27.1% and energy by 13.7%.

Particularly noteworthy among this rise in production in the different branches of activity was the automotive industry, one of the sectors worst hit by the halt in activity in April 2020. Vehicle manufacturing has multiplied its activity by 10; specifically, the rise in production stands at 929.3%. The rise in the activity of the garment industry (up 321.4%) and the manufacture of furniture (up 259.9%) were also highly visible.