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.

Codere SA reached an agreement with creditors to restructure 1.1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of debt, allowing the Spanish gaming company to avoid entering insolvency proceedings, Bloomberg News reported. The company will use the U.K. courts and seek a scheme-of-arrangement to implement the deal, which includes issuing 675 million euros of new bonds and 253 million euros of new loans, Codere said in a statement. Jose Antonio Martinez Sampedro, the current chairman and chief executive officer, will continue performing his executive role in the group, according to the statement.

The number of Spanish companies seeking protection from creditors has fallen to the lowest in three years as the economy recovers and changes to the nation’s bankruptcy rules help heavily-indebted borrowers, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Insolvency proceedings dropped 28 percent to about 4,000 this year, according to the Spanish rating company Axesor. The nation overhauled bankruptcy rules in March to help troubled companies avoid proceedings, known as concurso, and prevent liquidation.

Struggling Spanish pizza delivery business Telepizza is set to refinance existing loans with a new first lien loan and a new Payment In Kind (PIK) loan that will help it escape an expensive debt restructuring, banking sources said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The refinancing will repay most lenders in full. Most of an existing PIK loan will be swapped for equity and private equity firm KKR is making a new 180 million euro investment in the company. Private equity firm Permira bought Telepizza in 2006 for 962 million euros ($1.31 billion).

A strong start to the tourist season helped Spain’s unemployment rate fall to its lowest in two years while two banks with large local customer bases said business had picked up, fuelling hopes the country’s economic revival is gathering pace, the Irish Times reported. With a minister suggesting the government might raise its GDP forecast, data showed joblessness fell at the fastest quarterly rate on record between April and June.