The service sector, also known as the ‘tertiary’ or ‘residual’ sector, has long been a Cinderella subject within the sphere of economic investigation. In Spain, as elsewhere, despite the growing importance of services in recent decades, there have been few detailed and comprehensive studies. Scholarly research in contemporary Spanish economic history has tended to focus on the shift from agriculture to industry.

In global terms, the process of rapid tertiary expansion got under way in the United States after 1945. Subsequently, other industrialised nations followed the American pattern, often with a significant time lag. In 1968, the economist Victor Fuchs coined the phrase ‘service economy’ to describe a situation where more than half of a country's labour force was employed in activities other than farming, forestry, fisheries, mining and manufacturing (Fuchs, 1968).

Using Fuchs's criteria, Spain can be said to have joined the ranks of the world's service economies in 1981. At the beginning of the present decade, the OECD average for employment in the service sector was 62 per cent. In certain countries, including Great Britain, Belgium, the United States, Canada and Australia, the proportion was as high as 70 per cent. By comparison, Spain trailed several percentage points behind. According to Juan Ramón Cuadrado, in 1990, 54.2 per cent of the Spanish working population was engaged in the various pursuits which together comprise the tertiary sector, among them commerce, transport, tourism, financial services, education, health and social services.