Introduction To The Spanish Legal Banking Framework

Banking industry in Spain represents, in relation to the size of the Spanish economy as a whole, a quite large sector which has increasingly grown during the last 10-15 years, prompted, amongst others, by a few remarkable mergers between some of the largest banks in the late nineties, and a progressive investment policy of such entities abroad, specially in South America, where major Spanish banks have consolidated their positions at the head of important banking markets.

As far as the regulatory aspects are concerned, Spanish banking market is a regulated sector, so that it is subject to a detailed regulation on a number of aspects of the banking practice (capital adequacy, prudential supervision, insolvency requirements, money laundering, consumer protection, and many more).