As the economic recovery takes hold consumer confidence is growing and the housing market is starting to pick up after a seven-year slump. We think this will encourage people to start investing more in basic home maintenance as well as bigger home improvement projects.

But the last thing Spain needs is another property boom. The banks may be easing their lending criteria and the retail trading climate is becoming more benign but people are unlikely to forget just how far the value of their homes fell.

This report provides data on spending on DIY goods, DIY specialists' sales, leading specialists' sales performance and online activity. In our consumer research for this report we asked which retailers consumers had bought DIY goods from in the last year, both online and in-store, and we asked which factors determined their choice of DIY retailer. We also asked what DIY our respondents had carried out over the previous year and what DIY plans they had for the coming year.