Current climate change in the Mediterranean basin is associated to increasing frequency and intensity of droughts. This climate dryness entails a serious impact on drought-sensitive forests, several of them considered as hot spots of biodiversity. Adaptive management, as experimental thinning for stand structural diversity enhancement, may increase tree-level resources availability. However, the long-term stand-level effectiveness of this approach at sustaining forest ecosystem functioning remains uncertain. Here, we attempt to place experimental thinning in a climate change adaptation context, using as experimental system the drought-sensitive fir Abies pinsapo. We conducted a long-term study (2004–2019), focused on tree basal area increment (BAI) and quantified to what extent thinning treatments improved drought resistance, recovery and resilience to drought in the remaining trees. The results support a post-thinning (after 2004) BAI increase in thinned stands (+104% if 30% thinning of basal area was applied; +141% for 60% thinning) compared to controls (+21%). Short-term growth resilience, estimated for an extreme drought occurred after thinning (2005), yielded higher resilience for thinned stands, throughout improved resistance, but similar recovery than control. However, extreme droughts observed thereafter (for instance in 2012) do not support a long-term increase in resilience. Growth resilience, estimated for wetter-than-average years showed similar short-term enhanced resilience in thinned stand, while these differences dispelled afterward.