Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MAY

Ten marvellously fun things to do in Spain this May

With longer and warmer days, May is the month when Spaniards take to the streets to throw fiesta after fiesta.

Published: 3 May 2019 09:50 CEST
Ten marvellously fun things to do in Spain this May
Men dressed in traditional attire "chulapo" take part in the San Isidro celebrations. Photo: AFP

Festivals

April Fair Seville, May 4th – 11th

Photo: Jorge Guettero / AFP

The only people the can out-do Sevillanos during Semana Santa are Sevillanos during the legendary April Fair. For one week the “Real de la Feria,” a huge area of the city is transformed into an amusement park with “casetas,” or canvas tents where important local families, friends, businesses, and political parties host parties that last all day and all night. This extraordinary spectacle is not for the faint hearted, with dancing, drinking, eating, and socializing taking place from early in the afternoon until sunrise every day of the fair.

Need a guide to navigating this festival? Read All the fun of the fair: A Guiri's guide to Spain's ferias

Patios de Córdoba (Córdoba courtyards festival), Córdoba, May 6th- May 19th

.
Photo: philipus/Depositphotos

The citizens of Cordoba will be competing for the prize of who has the most lush courtyard, decorating their patios with bright flowers, leafy green plants, fountains and more. The tradition dates back to 1921 with the town hall organizing a competition, along with music, dancing and wine.

Feria de Jerez (also known as the “Horse Fair”), Jerez de la Frontera, May 11th- 18th


Photo: AFP

Originally a livestock fair, the wonderful feria of Jerez is much more open than its more famous cousin – that held in Sevilla – as the casetas (temporary structures) are public so anyone can walk in and enjoy the food, drink and the dancing. Expect endless glasses of fino and dancing until dawn.

Titirimundi International Puppet Theatre Festival, Segovia, May 10th-15th

For five days in May, the medieval city of Segovia is transformed in this annual event for puppet enthusiasts. International puppet theatre groups stage performances across the city from traditional puppetry, to street theatre to acrobatics. Fun for all the family.

Fiestas de San Isidro, Madrid, May 10th-15th


Photo: nito103/Depositphotos

San Isidro is the patron saint of Madrid and May 15th is a public holiday for Isidro in the capital, though the celebrations usually kick off the week before and last until the Sunday after. Locals dress up in the typical chulapo and goyesco costumes, and dance to the traditional chotis in squares across old Madrid. It’s also the start of the prestigious bullfighting season at Las Ventas.
 
Medieval fayre, Ibiza Town, May 9th-12th

Photo: Pablo Guzmán Torres/ Flickr

For a few days in May, walking through the old walled city of Ibiza is like stepping back in time. The streets are filled with craft markets, wizards, witches, knights, princesses, princes and dragons. With displays of falconry, jousting tournaments, jesters and jugglers. All accompanied, of course, by wonderful food and drink.

WOMAD Festival (World of Music, Arts and Dance), Cáceres, May 9th-12th
 

Cáceres in Extremadura offers one of the world’s more unique music festivals as it is set within the historical walled city. And the three-day festival is completely free! 

L’Aplec del Caragol, Snail gastronomy festival, Lleida, May 31st – June 2nd


Photo: AFP

For three days, thousands of locals from Lleida in Catalonia celebrate the gastronomic delicacy, the snail!. More than 200,000 people take part in the fiesta, consuming around 12 tonnes of snails. But there's also music, fireworks and lots of fun street entertainment.

Mutua Madrid Open, Madrid, May 3rd-12th

Photo: AFP

A chance for tennis fans to see Rafa Nadal play on his home turf (clay) in this Masters competition. Held in the Caja Mágica, the tournament attracts all the big names from the tennis circuit.

Spanish Grand Prix, Barcelona, Sunday May 12th


Photo: Josep Lago/AFP.

The Formula 1 race held at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is one of the oldest in the world and celebrated its centenary in 2013. A must for petrol heads.

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