Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

UTILITIES

My pain in Spain: One woman’s frustrating battle for electricity in Barcelona

When Christina Hulmes moved into a new studio flat in Barcelona last November, she dutifully attempted to put the new electricity contract in her name.

Published: 26 February 2019 10:16 CET
My pain in Spain: One woman's frustrating battle for electricity in Barcelona
Christina Hulmes has been living by candlelight for three weeks. Photo: fffranzzz/Depositphotos

Three months later, the power was abruptly cut off in her apartment, with no warning.  

Now it's been 22 days and counting since Christina has been living without electricity.

This is the frustrating story of one woman's battle with Endesa, the largest electric utility company in Spain.

 

“I moved into a studio in Barcelona in November. I tried a few times via the email customer service to get the electric contract put into my name, and I wasn't getting anywhere. So in December I called them.  My Spanish is not fluent but I know how to say “I want my name on the electric contract”. Anyway after a long phone call I was told the process had begun and to wait for further info.

I wasn't receiving any new info, so after Christmas I decided to try the email route. I kept getting the same emails over and over for weeks “please provide us your documents through the link”. After submitting my documents several times I was getting very frustrated and confused as to what was going on.

Fast forward to February 4th when my electric supply was cut with no warning. 
 
On the 6th of Feb I (finally) managed to get the landlady to help (she doesn't seem to care if I don't have electricity) and she found out that instead of putting my name on the contract they had finished it instead.
 
It is now the 26th of Feb, I have not had power for nearly THREE WEEKS. I started the process for a new  contract with Endesa on Feb 6th, and they said it would be seven working days.
 
 
Seven working days have come and gone and when I managed to get my landlady on the phone to them again their excuse is that they sent someone and I wasn't there.
 
When I retaliated that they never called me (I have been by that phone DYING for a call) they informed me “No we didn't call you, but you weren't in, and anyway it's down to the distributor to call”. 
 
 
When we asked for the distributors (Fecsa-Enher) number they would not give us it due to “data protection” (I work on the phone in customer service and this rings very false to me as we ARE allowed to give out affiliates numbers, just not emails).  They told us we had to find it ourselves, and of course every number that we found for the distributor was Endesa's number… You go round in circles!
 
So 22 days with no power, no one can tell me when, or if it will be fixed and I am slowly deteriorating mentally, due to the fact my entire house runs on electricity.
 
The only utility I have is cold water. I am surviving by spending a small fortune on candles.”
 
 (A photograph showing the amount of candles Christina is using to have light in the apartment. )
 
Editor's note: The Local has asked Endessa to respond and is awaiting a reply.
 
Pain in Spain? If you are struggling with an aspect of life in Spain then send us your story and we can try and fix it. Email [email protected]
 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

READ MORE:

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.

SHOW COMMENTS