Jun
22
Spaniards stomp their heels at bailed-out bankers
Filed Under EN
By Paul Day and Clare Kane
MADRID (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 (80.96 billion pounds) 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.
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