Spain has refuted claims that it is to seek aid from the European Union, The Irish Times reported. Spain's economy ministry said Friday that it has not made a request for economic aid from the European Union, after a report in the FT Deutschland that the EU was preparing an aid package in case Madrid asked for it. The newspaper said that the EU was preparing for an aid application in the months ahead for access to the fund set up to lend to euro zone countries that run into Greek-style payments problems.

Marathon negotiations to overhaul Spain's rigid labor market collapsed on Thursday, raising the prospect of a tug-of-war between the government and trade unions in the troubled euro zone state, Reuters reported. The head of the World Bank meanwhile cast doubt on Europe's ability to surmount a sovereign debt crisis without restructuring liabilities of heavily indebted countries such as Greece -- a step euro zone leaders are refusing to contemplate.

Spain's public-sector workers went on strike Tuesday in what could be a run-up to a full general strike in response to recent spending cuts the government has announced to reduce Spain's budget deficit, The Wall Street Journal reported. The strike is a challenge against austerity measures worth a total of €15 billion ($17.88 billion) this year and next, including a 5% cut in public-sector wages this year and a freeze in pensions next year.

CajaSur, a 146-year-old regional savings bank founded and controlled by the Catholic Church—but run in partnership with the area's regional and local governments, local unions and the bank's clientele—was among a group of small savings banks, known as cajas, that fueled Spain's heady housing boom over the last decade with liberal lending practices to developers and homeowners alike. Today, however, that boom has gone bust amid a tidal wave of bad loans in a country plagued by rapidly growing government debt and high unemployment.

Caught between a populace resistant to more austerity measures and investors demanding budget cuts and more flexible labor markets, the Spanish government is finding it increasingly difficult to keep a grip on power, The New York Times reported. Last week, the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero narrowly won approval for an extra 15 billion euros, or $18.4 billion, in spending cuts — in an effort to bring the budget deficit down to 6 percent of the national economic output by 2011, from 11 percent last year. With labor unions and business leaders at loggerheads, Mr.

Spanish football teams are shooting for a new goal: To break even. In an effort to tackle reckless spending and rising debts among the 20 La Liga clubs, the country's top teams will be subjected to financial regulation by a new independent body established by the Spanish government to ensure that teams are living within their means, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Spanish central bank officials sought Monday to reassure nervous depositors after taking over ailing Church-controlled savings bank CajaSur over the weekend and firing its senior management, The Wall Street Journal reported. For the Bank of Spain, the cleanup of a mutual savings bank that holds just 0.6% of the country's banking assets shouldn't prove difficult. But the seizure of CajaSur comes as authorities grapple with a sector reeling from the collapse of the housing market at the same time that the government is hard-pressed to fix its own finances.

Real Mallorca have applied to the courts to go into voluntary administration in the next few days in a bid to sort out their finances, the Spanish club have said, Reuters India reported. Mallorca have been struggling with a debt of around €85 million ($103.4 million) and attempts to find a buyer to invest money into the club have so far been unsuccessful.

European Union finance ministers meet in Madrid today to discuss how to curb swelling budget deficits as Greece moved closer to asking for emergency aid to finance the region’s biggest shortfall, Bloomberg reported. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou yesterday asked for a meeting with the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which agreed last week to back a 45 billion-euro ($61 billion) rescue package for the cash-strapped nation. Talks will begin in Athens on April 19.

Grupo Corporativo Ono SA, Spain’s biggest cable television operator, got approval from lenders to restructure €3.5 billion ($4.8 billion) of loans, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. Holders of more than 80 percent of the debt agreed to the terms, which include delaying loan repayments to 2013, the Madrid-based company said today in a statement. Ono changed the terms of the loans as the worst recession in Spain in six decades eroded prospects for growth in the cable market.