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LIFE IN SPAIN

EXPLAINED: How the end of Spain’s state of alarm in May could affect you

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told journalists on Tuesday he trusted that the country’s state of alarm will end in just over a month. What would this mean for people living in Spain in terms of rules and restrictions from then on?

Published: 6 April 2021 17:04 CEST
EXPLAINED: How the end of Spain's state of alarm in May could affect you
Photos: Andrea Coma, Jaime Reina/AFP

“The Government’s objective is that once the period of the state of alarm has expired, on May 9th, it will not be necessary to extend it further,” Sánchez told a press conference in La Moncloa, adding that “currently we are approaching the end of this nightmare”.

“There’s not much time left now, much less so than we thought during the hardest moments, but we must still protect ourselves, we cannot lower our guard,” urged the Spanish Prime Minister.

“We want May 9th to be the end of the state of alarm,” Sánchez (pictured below) reiterated during a press conference in which he also spoke of the government’s objective of vaccinating 25 million people by July and 70 percent of the population (33 million) by the end of August.

Spain’s first state of alarm was implemented on March 14th 2020 as the country and the world went into a strict lockdown and ended on June 21st ahead of the summer season.

A second state of alarm was reinstated on October 25th due to rising infections in Spain after the summer period, a six-month estado de alarma which was scheduled to end on May 9th as has now been confirmed to still be the plan, if the epidemiological situation allows for it.

What will change when there’s no state of alarm?

Under the state of alarm, Spain’s central government, and in particular the Interior Ministry, held all powers, including over the country’s security forces as well as local and regional police forces.

These legislative powers allowed Pedro Sánchez’s government to recently change the face mask laws for all of the country, although as has been seen since, regional authorities still have the capacity to influence decisions.

The governments of Spain’s 17 autonomies have also been allowed to decide on restrictions and regulations within their own borders without having to get permission from a regional court to pass or modify measures, as seen with the more lenient policies of Madrid to the stricter rules of Valencia.

In theory, under the state of alarm Spain’s national government has the powers to pass decrees that all local authorities have to abide by – from curfew to opening hours for the retail and hospitality sector or inter-regional travel – but many of these decision-making powers have been given to the regions anyway.

For example, the last time when Spain’s state of alarm was lifted during summer 2020, the Basque government tried to limit gatherings to six people but the regional court rejected the measure. In neighbouring Navarre, a judge allowed for the restriction to come into force.

The potential end of the state of alarm on May 9th won’t necessarily mark the end of all restrictions in Spain, but some are likely to end.

Autonomies will find it a lot harder to keep restrictions in place as they’ll need to get judicial permission to implement any extension of the restrictions, or new ones.

Without the state of alarm to grant them privilege, a judge could deem that a curfew, a limit to the number of people that can meet or a ban on leaving the region encroaches on people’s fundamental rights.

So to recap, technically the conditions of the national government’s state of alarm would cease to be applicable on May 9th and regional authorities will have weakened powers and would have to request permission from a judge to continue applying drastic restrictions.

Could May 10th mark the start of a return to normality in Spain? As always, it may be dependent on where you live in the country, and whether Pedro Sánchez’s government decides to finally end the state of alarm on May 9th. 

READ ALSO: What are the restrictions in each region of Spain?

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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.

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