To understand where Spain is today, you have to start from the fact that in 1979 Spain was the eighth-largest industrial economy in the world. Today, it has slipped to seventeenth place. In between, Spain effectively deindustrialized, becoming a banking, services, and tourism hub. The problem is that the income streams such a growth model relies on come primarily from outside the country: when such people stop spending and lending, you are in serious trouble. It's even more of a problem when what domestic growth you do have is debt-financed and based on little more than the swapping of houses.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 186