The Association of Large Companies of the Spanish State, the Council of Companies for Competitiveness, has just entered the political debate with the publication of the Spain 2018 report. The aim of the report is to try to correct the greatest problem facing society, the scant possibility of drastically reducing unemployment. The report, which does not suggest concrete measures to stimulate growth and employment, does present medium-term economic strategies to encourage profitability and job creation. It is known that the 18 major companies of IBEX have an impact on the economic strategy of the State, but this time the publication of their own recipes has brought two realities on the table. The first, the oligarchic elite of the State implicitly recognizes that the austerity plan put in place so far by the central government has been a failure and that the worsening social and economic situation requires urgent action. Secondly, faced with the shift from the government of pp, large companies take the role of responding to the emergency. The Great Recession has therefore brought a double denial of politics: from outside the European Union sets the criteria for economic policy and from within it has the temptation to directly govern economic powers.

If it is not recognized that the burden of debt has caused a shortage of demand or an excess of production capacity, then there is a feast to be able to turn the recession around. The report’s proposals, however, focus on supply policies, that is to say, the head of supply policies. Let's look at some of them. The credibility of the series of proposals that the Report makes to create 2.3 million jobs until 2018 is almost zero, beyond where it comes from. For example, in order to combat unemployment, action is called for against the black economy. It would be a good thing if it envisaged measures against tax havens and tax fraud for large companies, but it is not mentioned. It is well known that many of these 18 companies use tax havens and other means of evasion to circumvent taxes. The claim comes from where it comes from and the lack of legitimacy is evident.

Among the proposals of large companies is also the increase in the average size of companies. However, the largest companies in the Spanish state have been the ones that have destroyed the most jobs in recent years, specifically the large companies of the IBEX 35 have eliminated more than 200,000 jobs in the last three years. Therefore, an increase in size can lead to job losses and not the opposite. On the other hand, the report reflects responsibility for the public account, but it prefers a further reduction in public spending and, therefore, public employment, of course. Here too, delegitimisation is evident, as large companies pay Hacienda on average 3.5% of their profits when they pay, and they are constantly resorting to tax rules to apply as a deduction the profits they receive or obtain outside the State.

The catalogue is more extensive, but to conclude we have to mention another black hole in the report: the demand to make the labour market even more flexible, when the OECD itself demonstrates that greater flexibility does not guarantee the creation of more jobs. To sum up, the measures do not bring any new developments and involve an effort to lower costs and increase the profitability of large companies.