Jun
22
Spaniards stomp their heels at bailed-out bankers
Filed Under EN
MADRID, June 22 |
MADRID, June 22 (Reuters) – A flamenco troupe bursts into a
bank branch in Seville in southern Spain, lampooning bankers in
dance and song. Further north, in Galicia, 50 men dressed in
prison garb march into a bank shouting slogans against costly
state bailouts for lenders.
In Barcelona and Madrid, a growing organisation of elderly
protesters stage regular “occupations” of bank branches, wearing
reflective vests and carrying signs decrying the bailouts.
The deepening economic crisis has prompted creative protests
among Spaniards frustrated at budget cuts in schools and
hospitals at the same time as banks that lent recklessly during
a building boom line up for 100 billion euros ($126.06
billion)in European aid.
Youtube videos of the flamenco protests are all the rage and
Spaniards circulate a growing flow of e-mail jokes and spoofs to
try to alleviate grim expectations that they will be the next
European country to need a full international rescue package.
The most frequent protest target is Bankia, one of
Spain’s biggest banks, which was taken over by the state in May
in the most costly bank bailout in Spanish history, estimated at
some 23.5 billion euros.
Meanwhile the government has cut 45 billion euros out of its
budget this year, hiking taxes, slashing public spending and
forcing cuts in the treasured public health and education
system.
“The workers are going to have to pay for this bailout since
the banks are clearly not going to. It’s pillaging, is what it
is,” said Anxo Noceda, a local union head in the town of Vigo
who helped organize the “prison-break” protest at a Bankia
branch in the northern region of Galicia.
During the protest the “prisoners” chanted “it’s not a lack
of money but an excess of thieves.” Spain’s banks, many run by
politicians, ended up with 300 billion euros in exposure to the
over-heated real estate sector, much of which has soured.
With the economy in its second recession since 2009 and one
in four Spanish workers out of a job, mostly peaceful marches
and mass demonstrations in cities have become common.
Bankia and its former executives and board members –
including politicians from the ruling People’s Party – are now
the target of a judicial investigation into allegations of fraud
around its launch last year on the stock exchange.
GRANDPARENTS ON THE MARCH
“We want to add a bit of colour to Spanish politics,” said
Ovidio Bustillo, an activist with the over-60s protest group
called “yayoflautas,” a name combining an affectionate word for
grandfather and a derogatory term for street people.
“Democracy in Spain needs a deep clean,” said Bustillo. The
yayoflautas, with about 300 members in their base in Catalonia
and more around the country, some of them veterans of protests
against the 1939 to 1975 Franco dictatorship, began occupying
banks in October.
On Friday the yayoflautas, who have 14,000 followers on
Twitter, occupied branches of Deutsche Bank across Spain and the
German consulate in Barcelona to protest what they see as
Germany’s imposition of austerity measures in southern Europe.
“Today all the yayoflautas have occupied part of German
land, the bankers’ bit,” the group said on Twitter.
The protesters, whose oldest member is 84, benefit from a
lighter hand from the police when they take to the streets.
“We’re usually surrounded by media and it’s different if the
police get a bit rough with a 20-year-old lad and if they do
that to someone with white hair,” said Maria Dulce Alonso, a
yayoflauta from Madrid.
Celestino Sanchez, 62, one of the original 17 yayoflautas,
said the group is not afraid of the authorities.”What can they
do? Send us to jail? I’ve already been, many of us have been in
jail,” he said, referring to the history of protests in the
Franco era.
FOOT-STOMPING LAMPOONS
“You’ve changed, my friend, since you came in to money. I
need two jobs to pay my mortgage,” wails a middle-aged flamenco
cantaor in jeans and sunglasses to an audience of bemused
clients and staff in a Bankia branch in Seville.
A video of the protest (link.reuters.com/jex88s)
shows a growing group of flamenco dancers join the singer.
Dressed in long black dresses they stomp out their frustrations
on the bank’s stone floor.
“You get in trouble and I get thrown out in the street,” the
singer continues, referring to rising numbers of evictions of
mortgage defaulters in Spain.
The protest was staged by the FLO6x8 flamenco group, whose
slogan is “body vs capital.”
Bankia may be a favourite protest target, but it is by no
means the only one.
Other videos show the Rumba Rave, a seemingly spontaneous
dance number by more than two dozen people in a branch of
Santander bank, or “Ninja Girl,” who tears open a purse full of
pennies over her head and struts defiantly in the faces of
confused-looking bank clerks.
As middle-class and less-well-off Spaniards see their
quality of life declining, the government has struggled to get
across its argument that aid for banks is being done through
loans or temporary equity stakes and will be returned.
Spain, the euro zone’s fourth largest economy, has seen its
sovereign borrowing costs soar as investors shy away from a
growing perceived risk of non-payment.
With news bulletins on all channels leading with talk of
debt spreads and other once-obscure corners of the financial
sector, another viral video pokes fun at the growing national
obsession with the bond market.
The short film (link.reuters.com/pex88s) shows three
Andalusian housewives debating derivative trades and monetary
mass.
“What we need is quantitative easing to mitigate the
recession,” one of the women’s neighbours adds to the debate
from her rooftop terrace as she adjusts her apron.
Her friend gives a Spanish shrug of derision and waggles a
bread stick in the air. “You’re mad!” she snorts. “The inflation
process is sky rocketing. What do I do with my savings? Eat
them?”
($1 = 0.7873 euros)
(Additional reporting by Gustau Nacarino; Editing by Fiona
Ortiz and Myra MacDonald)
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