A RECORD number of companies and sole traders went into receivership or were declared bankrupt last year – a total of 9,660, which is the highest ever seen since bankruptcy became legally-recognised 10 years ago.
This represents a rise of 6.5 per cent on the figure for 2012, and never before have this many insolvencies been declared in the space of a year in Spain, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
In the first three years after the Insolvency Law was passed in 2004, up to and including 2007 there were between 968 and 1,147 firms going bankrupt or into receivership each year, but this shot up to 3,298 with the start of the financial crisis.
This again nearly doubled in 2009 when the recession and mass unemployment began to truly bite in Spain, reaching 6,197 that year, dropping slightly to 5,962 in 2010 but then soaring again in 2011 to 6,863.
However, the last two calendar years have seen a sharp increase, with insolvencies shooting up by over 50 per cent.
In 2012, a year which started two months after the current reigning PP government got into power after an eight-year spell of socialist rule, firms and sole traders going into receivership or out of business soared to 9,071 and last year, to 9,660.
Although the last quarter of 2013 saw a slight drop in the number of bankruptcies on the same period in 2012 – by 15.4 per cent with 2,285 new insolvencies declared – this was still 19.8 more than in the final quarter of 2011.
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