Spain

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy delayed seeking a second rescue for Spain while pledging to continue bailing out its regions as Valencia requested more money to settle bills and cover debt, Bloomberg reported. Rajoy spoke today following a meeting in Madrid with French President Francois Hollande. Catalonia, Valencia and Murcia this week claimed more than half of an 18 billion-euro ($23 billion) fund announced by Rajoy last month to help the regions face bond redemptions and finance their deficits in the second half.

Catalonia became the third Spanish region to ask the central government for a bailout, heightening concerns about Madrid's ability to raise cash as new signs emerged of economic problems confronting the country, The Wall Street Journal reported. Catalonia, Spain's most-indebted region, said it would ask for €5 billion ($6.27 billion) in financial assistance from the government in Madrid, as the country's economic recession deepened in the second quarter and outflows from bank deposits hit a record.

As Europe's leaders struggle with a five-year-old economic crunch that has saddled Spain with the industrialized world's highest jobless rate, young Spaniards are increasingly embracing bottom-up self-help initiatives to cope, The Wall Street Journal reported. The diverse measures—some commonly associated with rural or disaster-zone economies—supplement a public safety net that is fraying under government austerity programs.

Hanwha Group’s bid to buy the insolvent German manufacturer Q-Cells SE drew a competing approach from a Spanish power-plant builder that also wants to own what was once the biggest solar-cell maker, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Isofoton SA was approved to bid for Q-Cells after Chief Executive Officer Angel Luis Serrano met with the German company’s insolvency administrator Henning Schorisch today, according to an e-mailed statement from Isofoton. Serrano will present the bid, to be made with a U.S. investor it didn’t identify, to Q-Cells’ creditors at an Aug. 29 meeting, it said.

The European Commission has asked Spain to delay unveiling a banking reform by a week to allow it study the measures in more detail, the government said yesterday, the Irish Times reported. The conservative administration of Mariano Rajoy had been expected to announce the approval of several changes to the country’s struggling financial system after yesterday’s cabinet meeting. However, deputy prime minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría said the commission wanted to analyse the reform further before its presentation on August 31st.

Spain is negotiating with euro zone partners over conditions for aid to bring down its borrowing costs, though the country has not made a final decision to request a bailout, three euro zone sources said on Thursday. The favored option being discussed is that the existing European rescue fund, the EFSF, would purchase Spanish debt at primary auctions while the European Central Bank would intervene in the secondary market to lower yields. No specific figure for aid has been discussed in the talks, which started several weeks ago, one of the sources told Reuters.

Spain will put its bank rescue fund in charge of the bad assets separated out from the nation’s struggling lenders that are receiving a European bailout, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The FROB fund will be the main shareholder in a so-called bad bank, according to a proposal that will be approved by the Cabinet on Aug. 24, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told the Efe news agency in an interview Sunday. All the banks receiving loans from European rescue funds will have to transfer their non-performing assets to the bad bank, he said.

A Spanish mayor who became a cult hero for staging robberies at supermarkets and giving stolen groceries to the poor sets off this week on a three-week march that could embarrass the government and energize anti-austerity campaigners, Reuters reported. Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, regional lawmaker and mayor of the town of Marinaleda - population 2,645 - in the southern region of Andalusia, said food stolen last week in the robberies went to families hit hardest by Spain's economic crisis.

More corporate storm clouds gathered over Spain, as two major European companies on Wednesday joined those that have said they are taking steps to reduce exposure to the recession-hit country, The Wall Street Journal reported. Dutch financial services company ING Groep NV said it has taken aggressive steps to reduce its exposure to Spain, as it seeks to tackle a funding imbalance that could pose a serious threat should Spain eventually exit the euro zone.

Last week’s signal from Spain’s prime minister that he may be prepared to request assistance from the eurozone’s €440bn rescue fund to drive down his country’s borrowing costs has shifted the debate back to where it was more than a month ago: what strings will be attached to such aid?