This, in turn, introduces uncertainty over the behaviour of the incomes of these agents, which means they tend to postpone their consumption and investment decisions. The sharp decline in the consumer confidence indicator in March (the largest decrease in the historic time series, which goes back to July 1986) gives an indication of the magnitude of these effects. This fall suggests that the increase in uncertainty may have begun to adversely affect household spending decisions. The results of the latest edition of the Banco de España Business Activity Survey (EBAE) suggest that the war has begun to worsen the expectations of non-financial corporations regarding their turnover and also the duration of the global supply chain problems, which is now estimated to be longer. Third, the invasion of Ukraine will affect the Spanish economy through the trade channel, the direct impact of which is assumed to be moderate, as bilateral trade flows with the countries at war are relatively limited. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, Spanish goods exports to Russia and Ukraine represented only 1.6% and 0.3% of the total, 2  respectively. Russian tourism, meanwhile, accounted for 2.2% of total spending by foreign tourists. However, the indirect effects on Spanish trade flows may be significant. The war will particularly affect central and eastern European countries, which are more exposed to Ukraine and Russia, and, therefore, the growth of Spanish export markets.
The current economic situation Before the war, the world economy was on a path of gradual recovery, following the most acute phase of the pandemic, although the recovery was already flagging from the second half of 2021 owing to global bottlenecks and the increase in inflationary pressures. The gradual path of recovery in activity prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was, in any case, highly uneven across geographical areas and sectors of activity. Thus, while some economies had already regained or even surpassed their pre-crisis levels of activity, others had not. Spain, despite having one of the highest levels of vaccination in the world, was among the latter. At the end of 2021, Spain’s output was still 3.8 percentage points (pp) below its pre-pandemic levels, while in the euro area as a whole this gap had already closed. One factor that would explain the difference in progress is the sectoral composition of activity. In particular, the recovery tends to be more delayed in those countries, like Spain, in which services that are highly dependent on personal interaction, such as those linked to tourism, account for a large share of the economy. Economic developments in Spain, and in the rest of the world, have been affected by upward inflation surprises since the second half of 2021, driven in particular by energy and food, although there has also been a slight rise in underlying inflation. Between December 2020 and March 2022, the annual increase in consumer prices rose from -0.6% to 9.8%.