of the hidden economy vary, the real Spanish GDP may be around 20% bigger as it is estimated that the underground economy of Spain moves annually 190 billion Euros (US$224 billion). Among high income European countries, only Italy and Greece are estimated to have larger underground economies than Spain. Thus Spain may have higher purchasing power as well as a smaller gini coefficient than shown in official numbers. In 2012, the Spanish government officially requested a credit from the European Stability Mechanism to restructure its banking sector in the face of a financial crisis. The ESM approved up to €100 billion in assistance, although, in the end, Spain only drew €41.3 billion. The ESM programme for Spain ended with the full repayment of the credit drawn, eighteen months later. History During the first decades of the twentieth century, Spain experienced an accelerated growth of its industrial labor force and urban population; the economy became less agrarian as the process of urbanization spread after 1910. The largest sector was still agriculture but saw declines, along with fishing, relative to the share of active population engaged in the activity. The fastest growing sector at that time was services. When Spain joined the EEC in 1986 its GDP per capita was about 72% of the average of its members. At the second half of the 1990s, the conservative government of former prime minister Jose María Aznar had worked successfully to gain admission to the group of countries joining the euro in 1999. By 2007, Spain had achieved a GDP per capita of 105% of European Union's average due to its own economic development and the EU enlargements to 28 members, which placed it slightly ahead of Italy (103%). Three regions were included in the leading EU group exceeding 125% of the GDP per capita average level: the Basque Country , Madrid, and Navarre. According to calculations by the German newspaper Die Welt in 2008, Spain's economy had been on course to overtake countries like Germany in per capita income by 2011. in October 2006, Unemployment stood at 7.6% which compared favorably to many other European countries, and especially with the early 1990s when it stood at over 20%. In the past,Spain's economy had included high inflation and it has always had a large underground economy. The turn to growth during the 1997-2007 period produced a real estate bubble fed by historically low interest