One in three Spaniards want pesetas back

Thirty percent of Spaniards would prefer to return to the peseta, Spain's currency until it joined the Eurozone in 2000, according to the Transatlantic Trends study by US think tank the German Marshall Fund.  

That's against the 27 percent of French and Portuguese people who would abandon the euro, and is the highest level among the 10 European countries surveyed. 

Only 49 percent of Spaniards surveyed believed the Euro had been positive for the national economy, down 18 percent since 2010, the German Marshall Fund study also shows.

These results reflect a wider rejection of Europe by Spain.

In 2010, 83 percent of people in Spain were in favour of the EU: three years in 2013 later that figure is 59 percent.

Support for EU leadership, meanwhile, was found to have fallen from 67 to 56 percent among Spaniards in the 12 months since the 2012 Transatlantic trends survey. 

In addition, 75 percent of Spaniards disapproved of the EU's handling of the economic crisis.

Asked if they supported spending cuts to reduce national deficit, 42 percent of Spaniards said they were in favour while 35 percent wanted to see current spending levels maintained and 28 percent wanted to see spending increased. 

Internationally, Spain had the highest levels of disapproval of Barack Obama — 31 percent — among the countries surveyed. This was done 12 percent on 2012 figures.

The Transatlantic Trends poll surveyed people in Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Britain, the United States and Turkey.

Some 1,000 people in each country were polled in June and July.