The Spanish Welfare State from Zapatero to Rajoy: Recalibration to Retrenchment

Abstract

The modernization and expansion of Spain’s welfare state were largely accomplishments of the Socialist Party (PSOE) governments under Prime Minister Felipe González between 1982 and 1996. However, during those years, social spending was also firmly kept in check by economic policy requirements (del Pino & Ramos 2009; Guillén 2010; Rodríguez-Cabrero 2011). This chapter demonstrates that this assertion is also true for the two terms of Socialist prime minister Rodríguez Zapatero (2004–11). I argue that Zapatero’s governments enacted some reform initiatives during his first term and the beginning of his second term aimed at modernizing and adapting the welfare state to the so-called new social risks (immigration, aging, changing family structure, new forms of poverty, among others), what in the comparative literature has been dubbed recalibration (Pierson 2001). However, due to the general change of policy direction in response to the economic and sovereign debt crises toward austerity and adjustment requirements, in the latter half of the second term the Socialist government was forced to undo some of these policies and enact measures that represented welfare state retrenchment.