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LIFE IN SPAIN

Bucket list: Six clubs in Spain to visit at least once in your life

It’s no secret that the Spanish like a party, but less widely acknowledged is their flair for throwing them in weird and wonderful locations. The nation’s club promoters have taken full advantage of Spain’s breathtaking scenery, enviable weather and unique spaces to host some of the world’s most impressive nights.

Published: 4 July 2018 13:23 CEST
Bucket list: Six clubs in Spain to visit at least once in your life
f135.com

Ibiza might have a monopoly on superclubs, but there are lesser known gems to rival the island’s hedonistic party scene dotted all over Spain. 

Florida 135, Huesca


Photo: f135.com/instagram

Clubbing is all about escaping from the real world for a few hours, and Fraga’s legendary Florida 135 epitomises this idea. The club’s jaw-dropping design, inspired by Blade Runner and West Side Story, is intended to make clubbers feel as if they’re roaming an imaginary city, complete with street lamps, unique bars and a cinema. To top it all off, Florida 135 attracts the biggest and best names in electronic music to the small town in Aragon; the likes of Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth and Skream have all graced the decks.

READ ALSO: The eight best music festivals in Spain this summer

La Terrrazza, Barcelona


Photo: laterrrazza.com

La Terrrazza lies atop Montjuic, the hill that overlooks Barcelona. It’s an open-air house haven in the courtyard of a beautiful chateau, with incredible views, internationally renowned DJs and a Balaeric vibe. It’s only open for the summer season, between May and October, and is a principal venue for the city’s Sónar festival each June.

L’Umbracle, Valencia


Photo: umbracleterraza.com

This vast space in Valencia’s Arts and Sciences Centre is a real spectacle – its enormous dome, open air terrace and gardens lined with palm trees have to be seen to be believed.

Pikes, Ibiza


Photo: pikesibiza.com

It might not always be mentioned in the same breath, but Pikes is just as important in Ibiza lore as Pacha, Amnesia and DC10. British sailor and face of Chesterfield cigarettes Tony Pike opened the hotel in an old farmhouse in 1980 to throw wild parties with his celebrity friends. In the years since, Pikes has been Freddie Mercury’s home for several months, served as the location for the ‘Club Tropicana’ video and become known as one of the most intimate and unique venues on the island. To this day it’s a favourite of DJs, celebs and clubbers looking for an Ibiza experience like no other.

Cova d’en Xoroi, Menorca


Photo: covadenxoroi.com

Tucked away in a cliffside cavern on the south side of Menorca, this stunning venue might be the most cinematic entry on this list. Serving aperitifs in the morning, cocktails at sunset and finally turning into a club for the nighttime, it’s open during the summer season between June and September. 

La Pipa, Barcelona


Photo: pipaclub.eu

This clandestine after-hours jazz club is located in a third storey flat in Barcelona’s Gothic quarter. The Sherlock Holmes-themed watering hole is reached by ringing the correct buzzer and is open well into the early hours, making it perfect for post-club debriefs.

READ ALSO: Ten brilliantly fun things to do in Spain this July

MONEY

Rampant branch closures and job cuts help Spain’s banks post huge earnings

Spain’s biggest banks this week reported huge profits in 2021 and cheered their return to recovery post-Covid, but ruthless cost-cutting in the form of thousands of layoffs, hundreds of branch closures and the removal of many ATMs have left customers in Spain suffering, in this latest example of ‘Capitalismo 2.0’. 

Published: 3 February 2022 13:34 CET
A man withdraws cash from a Santander branch in Madrid.
More than 3,500 Santander workers lost their jobs in Spain in 2021 and a further 2,000 more employees working for Santander across Europe were also laid off. Photo: PHILIPPE DESMAZES / AFP

Spanish banking giant Santander on Wednesday said it has bounced back from the pandemic as it returned to profit last year, beating analyst expectations and exceeding its pre-COVID earnings.

Likewise, Spain’s second-largest bank BBVA said on Thursday that it saw a strong rebound in 2021 following the Covid crisis, tripling its net profits thanks to a recovery in business activity.

It’s a similar story for Unicaja (€137 million profit in 2021), Caixabank (€5.2 billion profit thanks to merge with Bankia), Sabadell (€530 million profit last year), Abanca (€323 million profit) and all of Spain’s other main banks.

This may be promising news for Spain’s banking sector, but their profits have come at a cost for many of their employees and customers. 

In 2021, 19,000 bank employees lost their jobs, almost all through state-approved ERE layoffs, meant for companies struggling financially.

BBVA employees protest against layoffs in May 2021 in Madrid. Spain’s second-largest bank BBVA is looking to shed 3,800 jobs, affecting 16 percent of its staff, in a move denounced by unions as “scandalous”. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)

Around 11 percent of bank branches in Spain have also been closed down in 2021 as part of Spanish banks’ attempts to cut costs, even though they’ve agreed to pay just under €5 billion in compensation.

Rampant branch closures have in turn resulted in 2,200 ATMs being removed since the Covid-19 pandemic began, even though the use of cajeros automáticos went up by 20 percent in 2021.

There are now 48,300 ATMs in Spain, levels not seen since 2001.

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Apart from losses caused by the coronavirus crisis, Spain’s financial institutions have justified the lay-offs, branch closures and ATM removals under the premise that there was already a shift to online banking taking place among customers. 

But the problem has been around for longer in a country with stark population differences between the cities and so-called ‘Empty Spain’, with rural communities and elderly people bearing the brunt of it. 

 

Caixabank laid off almost 6,500 workers in the first sixth months of 2021. Photo: ANDER GILLENEA/AFP

Just this month, a 78-year-old Valencian man has than collected 400,000+ signatures in an online petition calling for Spanish banks to offer face-to-face customer service that’s “humane” to elderly people, spurring the Bank of Spain and even Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to publicly say they would address the problem.

READ MORE: ‘I’m old, not stupid’ – How one Spanish senior is demanding face-to-face bank service

It’s worth noting that between 2008 and 2019, Spain had the highest number of branch closures and bank job cuts in Europe, with 48 percent of its branches shuttered compared with a bloc-wide average of 31 percent.

Below is more detailed information on how Santander and BBVA, Spain’s two biggest banks, have reported their huge profits in 2021.

Santander

Driven by a strong performance in the United States and Britain, the bank booked a net profit of €8.1 billion in 2021, close to a 12-year high. 

It was a huge improvement from 2020 when the pandemic hit and the bank suffered a net loss of €8.7 billion after it was forced to write down the value of several of its branches, particularly in the UK. It was also higher than 2019, when the bank posted a net profit of €6.5 billion.

Analysts from FactSet were expecting profits of €7.9 billion. 

“Our 2021 results demonstrate once again the value of our scale and presence across both developed and developing markets, with attributable profit 25 per cent higher than pre-COVID levels in 2019,” said chief executive Ana Botin in a statement.

Net banking income, the equivalent to turnover, also increased, reaching €33.4 billion, compared to €31.9 billion in 2020. This dynamic was made possible by a strong increase in customer numbers, with the group now counting almost 153 million customers worldwide. 

“We have added five million new customers in the last 12 months alone,” said Botin.

Santander performed particularly well in Europe and North America, with profits doubling in constant euros compared to 2020. In the UK, where Santander has a strong presence, current profit even “quadrupled” over the same period to €1.6 billion.

Last year’s net loss was the first in Banco Santander’s history, after having to revise downwards the value of several of its subsidiaries, notably in the UK, because of COVID.

The banking giant, which cut nearly 3,500 jobs at the end of 2020, in September announced an interim shareholder payout of €1.7 billion for its 2021 results. “In the coming weeks, we will announce additional compensation linked to the 2021 results,” it said.

BBVA

The group, which mainly operates in Spain but also in Latin America, Mexico and Turkey, posted profits of €4.65 billion ($5.25 billion), up from €1.3 billion a year earlier.

The result, which followed a solid fourth quarter with profits of €1.34 billion, was higher than expected, with FactSet analysts expecting a figure of €4.32 billion .

Excluding non-recurring items, such as the outcome of a restructuring plan launched last year, it generated profits of 5.07 billion euros in what was the highest figure “in 10 years”, the bank said in a statement.

In 2020, the Spanish bank saw its net profit tumble 63 percent as a result of asset depreciation and provisions taken against an increase in bad loans due to the economic fallout of the virus crisis.

“The economic recovery over the past year has brought with it a marked upturn in banking activity, mainly in the loan portfolio,” the bank explained, pointing to a reduction of the provisions put in place because of Covid.

In 2021, BBVA added a “record” 8.7 million new customers, largely due to the growth of its online activities. It now has 81.7 million customers worldwide.

The group’s net interest margins also rose 6.1 percent year-on-year to €14.7 billion, said the bank, which is undergoing a cost-cutting drive.

So far, it has axed 2,935 jobs and closed down 480 branches as the banking sector undergoes increasing digitalisation and fewer and fewer transactions are carried out over the counter.

At the end of 2020, BBVA sold its US unit to PNC Financial Services for nearly 10 billion euros and decided to reinvest some of the funds in the Turkish market.

In November, it launched a bid to take full control of its Turkish lending subsidiary Garanti, offering €2.25 billion ($2.6 billion) to buy the 50.15 percent stake it does not yet own.

The deal should be finalised in the first quarter of 2022.

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