MADRID — Despite the economic gloom that has enshrouded it since the onset of the global financial crisis, Spain has at least one industrial bright spot: The country and its skilled, if underemployed, work force have once again become a beacon for European carmakers.

Four years of economic turmoil and the euro zone’s highest jobless rate have made the Spanish labor market so inviting — an estimated 40 percent less expensive than those of Europe’s other biggest car-making countries, Germany and France — that Ford and Renaultrecently announced plans to expand their production in Spain.

Even before those announcements, other carmakers had committed this year to new plants or expansion totaling as much as 2 billion euros, or $2.64 billion.  Read more