Live News From Spain As It Happens

New Spanish home loans collapsed to their lowest number in at least eight years in October, official data showed on Wednesday, as the economy battled a feared recession.

People took out just 22,193 loans in the month, down 43.6 per cent from a year earlier, said the National Statistics Institute.

It was the lowest monthly figure since the data were first collected in the current format in 2003, a period that includes the 2008 property bubble collapse, which wreaked havoc on Spain's economy.

Read more at ninemsn.com

Luis de Guindos dampened already gloomy expectations for the economy as the new conservative government got to work on its programme of tough spending cuts.

"This quarter the Spanish economy will surely see a downturn and we will return to negative growth," he told a news conference.

"Make no mistake, the next two months are not going to be easy, neither from a growth nor a jobs point of view," he said at a ceremony for his top ministry staff taking office.

Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

Thousands of Spanish properties built expressly for the holiday home market are now stagnating in search of buyers.

A new report from Spanish bank Bankinter claims at least 30 percent of the 700,000-strong glut of new homes, half of which were built with overseas investors from Northern Europe in mind, will never sell at current prices.

Many of the ‘unsalable’ homes belong to the banks after loans to developers turned sour and Bankinter argues that half price reductions are the only way to shift the property excess.

Read more at fly-2let.co.uk

Moody's has placed several Spanish banks and lender holding companies under review for a possible ratings downgrade.  These include:

Banco Cooperativo; Banco Sabadell; Bankia and its holding company, Banco Financiero y de Ahorro; Bankinter, CaixaBank and its holding company, La Caixa; Confederacion Espanola de Cajas de Ahorro; Caja Rural de Granada; Ibercaja Banco; and, Lico Leasing.

Read more at cbsnews.com