Despite its notorious reformist record in regulatory policies, such as the liberalization of divorce and abortion, the approval of same-sex marriage, the non-partisan running of public television and the promotion of gender-equality programmes, the Zapatero government (2004-11) has achieved very little on the environmental front. After having minimized the magnitude of the economic crisis and, consequently, put off the necessary reforms to tackle it, the government eventually had to come to terms with a well-known situation: the unhealthy and disproportionate reliance of the Spanish economy on the building sector. At the end of 2009, a highly publicized Law on Sustainable Economy was passed. This law had been incorporated into the 2004 Socialist political programme but forgotten at a later stage.
Containing the three pillars of sustainable development (SD), the 2009 Law set out to change the economic model by means of promoting technology, innovation and good governance (economic pillar), education (social pillar), and renewables (environmental pillar). The state was to contribute with 10,000 million euros while the private sector was expected to come with a similar quantity in two years time. Regarding environmental sustainability, the main focus was on energy efficiency, linked to the technological improvement of transport and sustainable urban programmes, and renewable energies. This last point simple reflected the EU commitment to attain 20% of renewables, out of total energy used, by 2020. Two years later, however, the budgetary cuts in environmental-related programmes (13%), which clearly exceeded the average ministerial cuts, helped cast doubts on the political willingness to achieve these goals. The most harmfully affected programmes have been water quality (-37%), environmental protection and improvement (-47%), pollution abatement and climate change (-16). Investment on transport infrastructure, on the contrary, amounted to 13.600 million €.
