Construction sector: "Some businessmen have lost everything"

Between 2003 and 2007, some 700,000 properties were built every year. At its height, the construction sector employed 2.7 million people. In the first quarter of this year that figure had fallen to 1.5 million.

At 57, Sabas García has lived through three crises, but says that the current situation is the worst he has seen. "At one point I was building one-and-a-half houses a day. In one year I built 500 properties, mainly terraced houses. Between 2003 and 2004 it was insane," he says. At the height of the boom this Alicante-based builder had two firms and was employing up to 200 people in a bid to keep up with demand. He says salaries for skilled workers reached up to 6,000 euros a month.

"It was in the summer of 2007 when I noticed that suddenly my suppliers were not in their usual hurry for me to finish. Soon after he laid off 40 of his workforce. "By Christmas of 2008, the second crisis hit, the volume of work fell again, and my clients were in even less of a hurry." He says that as a result he laid off more workers, keeping just 40. "And then came 2009..." In April that year he folded his two businesses when the company that had kept him in business since the 1990s went bankrupt.

"It was a sudden change, and it hit me hard; I wasn't able to sleep at nights," he says. But despite the situation, he insists that he met his financial obligations, paying his workforce and creditors. What's more, even during the boom times he kept his own spending to a minimum: he lives in the same house he bought two decades ago. "I have colleagues who are ruined, they have lost everything, even their homes."

"The construction sector has hit rock bottom, and it will be another two or three years until things return to anything like normality," he predicts. "First of all in the big cities, then on the coast, and after that the small towns. That said, we will never return to the days of 2003 and 2004."