In recent years, the Spanish economy has enjoyed a rapid development phase in which the banks have fully participated. The transformation of Spain’s banking industry is evident in such key aspects as its composition, size and business mix, along with its productive specialization, improved efficiency, internationalization and changed competitive landscape.

This book looks at the recent evolution of the Spanish banks sector in the European context, along with the challenges now emerging and the strengths and weaknesses with which it confronts them.

Its main conclusions are that the soundness of the Spanish banking industry compared to its European peers owes to institutions’ greater efficiency and profitability, strong capital adequacy, sturdier loan-book quality and higher provisioning.

The authors, however, warn against overestimating the sector’s resilience to the uncertainties affecting financial markets, the slackening pace of economic growth and the downturn in real estate, and urge a detailed study of its weaknesses in this new, more adverse climate.Industry watchers—professionals, academics, researchers and the public in general—will find answers in this book to the most pertinent questions concerning the relative performance of Spanish banks in the European context.

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• Chapter 1: El desarrollo y la estructura financieros de la economía española: la importancia del sector bancario
• Chapter 2: La banca española en el contexto europeo
• Chapter 3: La posición de la banca española ante los retos de la internacionalización, la competencia y las nuevas tecnologías
• Chapter 4: Conclusiones
• Chapter 5: Apéndices