Like any good crisis, the troubles of Spain’s regional banks were years in the making. But they hit home in March 2009, when panicked depositors lined up outside a savings bank in Castilla-La Mancha, just south of Madrid. Over the course of a week, depositors withdrew €1 billion , forcing Spain’s central bank to pour in billions of euros to rescue the beleaguered bank.
A year later, in May 2010, the Bank of Spain took over CajaSur, another caja de ahorros, or savings bank. This time, there was no line of nervous account holders, but the extent of the nationwide crisis became clear. In the next two months, under pressure from the Bank of Spain, virtually every savings bank in Spain–about 45 institutions, which control half the banking activity in that country–announced plans to merge with another caja or otherwise restructure. (And just in time, apparently: When the European Union published the results of bank stress tests in July, five of the seven European banks that failed the tests were cajas. )
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