The Spanish Plan to Stimulate the Economy and Employment or, in its abbreviated form, Plan E —also known as Zapatero Plan— was a set of more than a hundred economic policy measures proposed by the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in November 2008 and developed throughout the IX legislature.[1]​[2]​ Its objective was to boost the country's economic activity, mobilizing large amounts of public money, to make in the face of the economic crisis that arose after the bursting of the global real estate and financial bubble in 2007.

Plan E consisted of four main lines of action: support measures for companies and families; employment promotion; financial and budgetary measures; and, finally, measures to modernize the economy.

The first part of plan E injected 7,836 million euros, and the second up to 5,000 more.[3] These funds were distributed among the different administrations, with the city councils being the organizations that decided in which public works this money would be invested. These actions were followed by others. Some media raised the amount of Plan E to more than 50,000 million euros[4]​ and criticized the spending on advertising posters.[5]​.

Given the continuity of the crisis and the increase in unemployment, this plan was extended under the name of Sustainable Economy Plan (State Fund for employment and local sustainability)&action=edit&redlink=1 "Sustainable Economy Plan (State Fund for employment and local sustainability) (not yet drafted)"). The plan's measures did not reactivate the economy as much as intended, although it is difficult to assess what its evolution would have been if the Plan had not been implemented. However

Public spending items such as Plan E and others similar contributed to the growth of the State debt in a very short period of time, which, together with the reduction in State income, was a trigger for the sovereign debt crisis that Spain suffered starting in 2010.

On August 30, 2009, the newspaper El País published a report on the economic and social impact of Plan E in which, among other things, the following was stated:[6]​.

The Court of Accounts "Tribunal de Auditors (Spain)") published a report in 2014 in which it harshly criticized Plan E, stating that it presented losses of up to 7.8 billion euros and that it incurred numerous irregularities in its application, among which it stood out that "it did not follow the criteria established in the accounting regulations relating to funds lacking legal personality." He also criticized that the criteria for awarding contracts were "excessively generic and imprecise" and that the same was carried out "without any publicity and directly", as well as that only 15% of the entities gave priority to employment as a distribution criterion, highlighting that the commitments to create and maintain employment had not been met and that in addition the duration of the contracts of many of the workers was very short despite the fact that each job cost about 160,000 euros to the treasury. public.[7][8]​ The report concluded that "in the vast majority of cases, new projects were not addressed, jobs were not created, nor municipalities improved."[9]​.