Jun
23
Spaniards stomp heels at bailed-out bankers
Filed Under EN
MADRID • A flamenco troupe bursts into a bank branch in Seville in southern Spain, lampooning bankers in dance and song. Farther 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 organization 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 $128 billion in European aid.
YouTube videos of the flamenco protests are all the rage and Spaniards circulate a growing flow of email 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 $30 billion.
Meanwhile the government has cut $58 billion 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 $386 billion 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.
“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.
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