Spain

A Spanish court has rejected a government proposal to rescue two of nine bankrupt motorways, increasing the likelihood the toll roads will go into liquidation and the state will have to assume their debt of more than 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), Reuters reported. A Madrid commercial court said on Feb. 24 the terms of the rescue package were not legal and the Ocana-La Roda and R4 roads would now enter liquidation, court documents showed. The government will appeal the decision, a government spokeswoman said. Ferrovial, a major shareholder in both roads, declined to comment.

Spain’s government, predicting strong economic growth after years of harsh spending cutbacks, will offer tax breaks to encourage long-term hiring and help struggling single-parent families, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Spanish leader announced the measures during a state of the nation address that spelled out themes of his campaign for a second term.

Caixabank of Spain issued a takeover bid on Tuesday for BPI, a Portuguese bank in which it was already the largest investor, in the latest chapter in the shake-up of Portugal’s banking sector, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The cash offer values BPI at 1.94 billion euros, or $2.21 billion, meaning that the takeover would be worth €1.08 billion if Caixabank ends up with 100 percent of the equity. The bid represents a 27 percent premium over the Portuguese bank’s closing share price on Monday.

An upstart leftist party gathered tens of thousands of followers Saturday for one of Spain’s largest antiausterity rallies in years, throwing down a populist challenge to a government already facing a secessionist movement in wealthy Catalonia, The Wall Street Journal reported. The marchers wound through central Madrid to the Puerta del Sol plaza in support of Podemos, a year-old party that aims to replicate the recent electoral victory of kindred leftists in Greece. They filled the plaza, which can hold an estimated 45,000 people, and spilled into adjacent streets.

Spain’s residential real-estate recovery is a tale of two cities: Madrid and Barcelona, The Wall Street Journal reported. Barcelona is the only city in Spain to post an annual increase in home prices during 2014. Prices in the city rose 2.8%, with some neighborhoods gaining as much as 8%. Madrid, too, has fared better than most. While it hasn’t enjoyed price gains, Madrid’s decline of 4.9% last year was better than the 5.7% drop for Spain overall, according to fotocasa.es, a Spanish property website.

Emilio Botín reshaped Banco Santander into one of the largest financial institutions in Europe through a series of major acquisitions, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Now his daughter, Ana Patricia Botín, is determined to make just as strong an imprint on the bank as her father. Santander said on Thursday that it would begin a capital increase of as much as 7.5 billion euros, or $8.9 billion, and cut its dividend payouts sharply to ease investor concerns about the strength of its balance sheet.

Spain has unveiled a series of measures to combat long-term unemployment, including a new monthly payment for about 450,000 jobless who currently receive no form of state support and face a growing risk of social exclusion, the Financial Times reported. The package comes amid rising concern over the fate of Spain’s long-term unemployed, and warnings that the country is facing a deepening social crisis.

How did they do it? Two years ago, Spanish banks were in crisis, in such bad shape that they put the eurozone at risk and required a lifeline of 41 billion euros, or $52 billion, to stay afloat, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Now, the slimmed-down Spanish banking sector, bolstered by significant provisions against bad mortgage loans and fresh capital injections from private investors, can take comfort in the results of stress tests by the European Central Bank.

Revelations related to how 82 executives and board members of a Spanish bank were given credit cards to spend freely on personal items and without apparent controls have dealt a blow to efforts to restore the image of the country’ financial sector, the Irish Times reported. The high court is investigating the credit cards, which were given out by Caja Madrid savings bank and Bankia, the lender that absorbed it in 2010, and they were not registered in official accounts.

Trade-only bed bank Transhotel has entered a three-month voluntary administration period as it seeks a buyer to resolve cash-flow issues, Travel Weekly reported. The bed bank, based in Spain, is continuing to trade and will honour bookings. It is in the process of contacting all travel agent and supplier partners to reassure them bookings are safe and to avoid any “knee-jerk reaction” in the trade. Under Spanish law, a company can put itself into voluntary administration for three months to get its finances back in order or prior to closing down.