This paper examines the growth processes of Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States between 1870 and 1994. The stability of the growth process is one of the central questions of economic growth theory. One of the goals of this article is to provide a precise characterization of takeoffs and slowdowns using recently developed techniques for identifying structural changes in economic time series. This is done by sequentially determining the timing of breaks in the trend process for the real GDP per capita and estimating changes in the coefficients. Once the break years dividing the different growth periods are identified, an attempt is made at (i) discerning between the similarities and differences characterizing the periods, (ii) comparing these distinctions across countries and (iii) examining the growth implications of these results, especially for the Spanish economy.

Key words: Spanish economy, growth, trend breaks, unit root hypothesis.
JEL classification: C22, O1, O47.