The Banco de España is Spain’s central bank and the supervisor of its banking sector. It has contributed to establishing a range of measures since 2007 to increase the resilience of the sector in response to the international financial crisis. This included increasing provisioning and transparency, promoting mergers between saving banks, and setting up the Sareb, the asset management company to which non-performing real estate assets of banks have been transferred.
The bank is currently coordinating a complex restructuring and recapitalisation programme, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreed with European authorities in July 2012, to restore confidence and stabilise the sector and put it on a more secure footing for the future.