Spain and Germany in a divided Europe. Issues and Perspectives of a relationship Josef Janning Spanish-German relations have gone through quite some change over the past decade, just as Spain underwent a massive change. Although it may have been largely disconnected from the rest of Europe during the late Franco period, Spanish democracy has turned around to embrace Europe. Over the past decade alone, Spain’s gross national income per capita has nearly doubled, having a massive impact on the lives of Spanish people. USDA­data 1 shows that Spain’s real GDP has also nearly doubled over its three decades of EU membership. By comparison, according to the same sources, the GDP of Italy in 1986 ex­ceeded that of Spain in 2014, but while Spain’s wealth was doubling since, Italy’s GDP in­creased by less than 15 percent. Before the financial crisis the Spanish-German relationship had been close since the for ­mative years of building democracy. Spain’s accession to the European Union and to NATO has been helped and supported by successive German governments while many in the Spanish political class, socialists, conservatives and the Catalan liberal-conservative re­gionalists alike, looked at Germany as a reference point of their country’s development. This focus on Germany also supported the gradual departure of Spain’s early role on the margins of the EU in favour of an engagement in the political centre in the course of the 1990s. As Spain matured in the EU and as a result of the long economic upswing the coun­try experienced through integration, political relations also developed into a more bal­anced relationship despite the differences in size, GDP and political weight. Following re­unification, on the other hand, Germany developed a stronger inward focus, while its import boom benefited many of Germany’s neighbours in the EU, and not least Spain. In the Span ­ish view, Germany continued to be a model for the modernisation of Spain, while in the German view, Spain had become the most promising pro-integration partner in the south of the EU, especially since Italy’s role in European affairs had changed significantly with the rise of Silvio Berlusconi. 1 See https://www.ers.usda.gov/data/macroeconomics/Data/HistoricalRealGDPValues.xls