Maria Dolores Cospedal buys a 2.3 million € home in Toledo

The President of the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha, María Dolores Cospedal, has purchased a 2.3 million € villa with 12,000 square metres of land in Toledo, which has upset six policemen who have been given the job of guarding the estate 24 hours a day. In addition to the six policemen, there are another five who give her personal protection. The previous president of Castilla-La Mancha, José María Barreda, lived in a flat in Ciudad Real. He also had a 260 square metre flat in Madrid and an apartment in Mallorca. President of Congress, José Bono, said ‘The security of a public servant is not measured in function of her residence. Cospedal has no more protection than other ex Presidents’, he said. In these times of austerity there has been no detail of the costs involved.

Mosquitoes are out in full force right now because warm weather allows a mosquito egg to become an adult in less than a week

Reach for the calamine lotion, it's mosquito season.

Mosquitoes are out in full force right now because warm weather allows a mosquito egg to become an adult in less than a week. Mosquitoes can infect millions of people every year and this year may especially be a doozy due to the mild winter we had. And with over 150 species of mosquitoes in North America (over 3,000 in the world), these pesky critters can really put a damper on summer fun!

The thing is, we're not always huge fans of conventional mosquito repellants on the market, which often irritate the skin. In the interest of seeing if there are chemical-free remedies, we've tested the following ways to get rid of mosquitoes. What worked and what should be left to the garden? Click through our slideshow to find out.

 

Testing 11 Ways To Get Rid Of Mosquitoes

 

 

1 of 12

 

 

×Sort by Ranking

• 
• 
• 
  4
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
  3
• 
  1
• 
  5
• 
  2
• 

 

Spain's banks may need yet more money to secure their future

Spain's borrowing costs have only risen since the European Union announced a €100 billion bailout of the country's banks ten days ago. On Monday the yield on Spanish 10-year bonds closed above 7% for the first time in the euro era. That's compared to a yield of less than 6% on 10-years before Spain was "rescued."

By Tuesday, the market's neuralgic reaction to the Spanish bailout prompted Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to plead once again for a different approach. At the G-20 summit in Mexico he argued that everyone would be better off if the EU's bailout funds recapitalized Spain's banks directly. This, Mr. Rajoy argued, would "break the link between risk in the banking sector and the sovereign risk."

In other words, the way to solve Spain's problems, Mr. Rajoy believes, is for someone else to carry the debt incurred by borrowing €100 billion or so to bail out Spain's banks. Then the cost and risk of the bailout would wind up on someone else's balance sheet. Spanish yields would start to fall again, and Spain would avoid a full-blown bailout. Spain made this argument before the bank-bailout loan was announced, but Germany demurred, insisting that the risks of taking on Spain's banks should fall on the Spanish.

Enlarge Image

Associated Press

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Mr. Rajoy's proposal would be a great deal—for Spain. But it's far from clear why Spain's euro-zone neighbors should bear the cost of rescuing its banks, or even how that might work. Restructuring Spain's problem banks means making distinctions between banks that can be saved, banks that shouldn't be saved, and banks that don't need saving. If public money does go into any particular institution, that should ideally be done in a way that minimizes the cost to taxpayers—for example, by imposing losses where possible on private owners and creditors first.

But neither the European Financial Stability Facility nor the European Stability Mechanism—the EU's bailout vehicles—are in any position to make those judgments. Among other problems, their involvement creates a third-party payer issue that avoids the hard choices (and raises the overall costs of the bailout) because someone else is spending the money.

Even then, a bailout is not any bank's inherent right. If a bailout happens at all, one hopes it's only because its long-term costs to the economy and taxpayers don't exceed the collateral damage of letting a particular institution fail. Then again, if bailing out the banks is going to drive an entire country into bankruptcy, as it did in Ireland, then the right course is probably not bailing them out at all.

Mr. Rajoy is right that the banks' debts and his country's solvency have become intertwined. But at least some of the bad debt is the result of politically directed lending during the boom times. What's more, Spanish banks owned 29% of Spain's sovereign debt as of March, up from 12% in 2010. That sort of "link" was presumably fine with Madrid when it was financing its deficits these past two years.

Now, however, that government debt is in danger of becoming yet another bad loan for the banking system. No wonder Germany wants to keep these entanglements at arm's length

Spain's banking crisis did not come out of the blue.

 In the 1990s, the Spanish suffered a bout of collective madness. Interest rates fell from 14 per cent (with the peseta) to 4 per cent (with the euro) in a matter of weeks. In 1998, the centre-right government passed a law that increased the amount of land for development. Developers got rich, selling the idea that property would always go up in value. You could buy a flat on the Mediterranean for $156,000 and sell it the next day for $234,000; by the end of the month it would be worth $390,000. And the flat, purchased off-plan, was still being built. Advertisement: Story continues below German banks financed Spain's banks, which needed funds for high-risk mortgages. Greed made the people rich for a while - but then it made them poor, and jeopardised their future. Spain is a country with a million unsold properties and an unemployment rate of 24.5 per cent. The situation of ''extreme difficulty'' described last week by the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has at its root the flats that banks accumulated when people started defaulting on mortgages. The total assets of Spain's banking system amount to about €3 trillion ($3.78 trillion). Net toxic assets - unsold real estate - are not known for certain. We do know that, bar the country's three largest banks (BBVA, Santander and CaixaBank) and a handful of medium-sized commercial banks, the system needs to be recapitalised. Delinquency rates are increasing, to 9.5 per cent on average and as high as 19 per cent at some banks. The banks need to increase their tangible capital to €100 billion, and the government does not have enough funds for a tough restructuring or a bailout (of the kind applied swiftly by Gordon Brown in Britain four years ago). At a recent press conference, the European Central Bank chief, Mario Draghi, insisted the ECB would not force any country - a reference to Spain, no doubt - to request a bailout or a full intervention. He also pointed out - in an oblique reference to calls for the ECB to intervene in the sovereign debt market by buying Spanish government bonds to drive up prices and bring down the risk premium relative to 10-year German bonds - that it was not the ECB's place to take on roles best played by others. A less drastic 11th-hour proposal now appears feasible: the European Stability Mechanism could support Spanish banks that require recapitalisation, but the Spanish Treasury would be responsible for measures to guarantee these bailout funds. As this would be only a partial bailout, Spain would not have to meet the stringent obligations imposed on the three countries bailed out to date: Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Just days after the Spanish finance minister declared that the markets were closed to Spain, he managed to raise more than €2 billion from the bond markets - though at a higher interest rate, not a good sign. The main problem right now is politics. Spain's centre-right government has been delaying the inevitable: asking the ECB and the Eurogroup of finance ministers for ESM funds to cover a partial bailout of the country's banks. Saturday's conference call among eurozone members to discuss a bailout had to bear fruit. No less than €100 billion is needed, according to two foreign audit firms. Germany, it seems, opposes this kind of bailout because the ESM requires new rules, to be approved, possibly, in the next few months. The referendum and general elections in Greece this weekend may be highly contagious to Spain's banking system. Spain could be forced to pay an even higher interest rate, and its banks would not be able to afford to take on debt. Spain favours a mutual eurobond system, a new European fiscal compact and a real European banking system - that is, more euro and fewer national markets.

The Text Of Rajoy's Text Message To Guindos

According to El Mundo, Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy sent a stunning text message to FinMin Guindos prior to the bailout negotiations. He said, according to El Muno editor Pablo Rodriguez: "Resist, we are the 4th power of the EZ. Spain is not Uganda." Translation: We're a major power, not some random IMF-case banana Republic. The followup message (according to Google translate) "if you want to force the redemption of Spain will prepare 500,000 billion euros and another 700,000 for Italy, which will have to be rescued after us." Bottom line: hold out for something good. We are powerful, and if they don't give in, the whole thing will go down. It will cost Europe 500 billion if Spain goes bust, and then another 700 billion if Italy goes bust. No wonder Der Spiegel, which represents the German point of view, has an article blasting Spanish blackmail.

Spanish town hall workers has not been paid for almost nine months, because the local mayor told said the funds had simply run out.

 "We are living a nightmare," said Mrs Rivadulla, 50. "I never believed this could happen." But in Spain, it is happening. And on a frightening scale: 434 local administrations are having their taxes retained, to pay off debts. Mrs Rivadulla, an administrator, is among 800 people employed by the local government in La Linea de la Concepcion, a windswept coastal town in the Andalucia region of southern Spain. Many, like her, have not been paid since last October, and are now forced to live on hand-outs from friends and family. Some are taking out banks loans, others remortgaging their houses and selling their cars. "The mayor simply said 'there is no money left,'" said Mrs Rivadulla, shaking her head sadly as she sat on the steps of La Linea's town hall, where hundreds of fellow employees staged a protest last week. "All I know is that it is not the fault of the workers." Mrs Rivadulla spoke as Spain looked on the point of swallowing its pride and joining Greece, Portugal and Ireland in seeking a billion bail-out for its banks, a move that seemed all but certain on Saturday when Eurozone finance ministers held a conference call to discuss such a deal. Spain's centre-Right government has so far publicly denied making such a request, fearing it will involve a humiliating hand-over of control of its national purse-strings to anonymous Brussels and IMF apparatchiks. Only last Tuesday, the country's finance minister, Cristobal Montoro, insisted: "The men in black will not be coming to Spain." However, in places like La Linea, a town of 65,000 where roughly one in three people of working age is jobless, nobody is interested in sparing the blushes of the political elite. All they care about is when they will be paid. On Thursday, The Sunday Telegraph watched as workers on the protest in La Linea tried to storm a council meeting, demanding to be given their salaries. Regional police in body armour were brought in to quell the unrest – the local police, like the demonstrators, had not been paid for nine months and so were not on hand. The town hall employees have kept working despite being unpaid because they fear that if they resign, they will forfeit any wages they are owed. But for the past nine months they have been burning tyres, going on strike, and writing letters to the Socialist lady mayor, Gemma Araujo, whose administration is milliones in debt. "Our town is bankrupt, what are you laughing about mayor?" read one banner last week. The workers allege that unlike the bosses of more heavily indebted towns such as Marbella and Jerez, Ms Araujo has failed to negotiated decent repayment terms for La Linea's debts. Instead, the majority of the taxation paid by La Linea's residents goes straight to Madrid, with not enough returned to fund the running of the municipality and to pay its workers. In a sense, their gripe is a microcosm of the complaints voiced by disgruntled Greeks, Portuguese and Irish, who claim their governments should likewise have negotiated far more generous terms for their bail-outs. "Our mayor is not supporting us," said Ricardo Fernandez de Vera, 53, a town hall lawyer. "She should have gone to Madrid and told them that we would pay off our debts slowly, so we could all get paid. We don't need to hand over every penny to the government, while we go hungry." Unlike in Greece and Ireland, the prospect of a bail-out in Spain has not led to a rise in feeling against Germany, whose Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been accused of trying to impose excessively harsh austerity measures. The Spanish government has not dithered in belt-tightening programmes, and among many of the demonstrators in La Linea, there is an acceptance that Spain is the author of its own misfortunes. Mr Fernandez, the lawyer, conceded Spain's 8,700 municipalities were part of the problem: the country, he said, should halve the number of local government offices to save money. Massive over-reliance on the construction sector was also weakness, he added. "It started off as a small problem with excess spending in the late 1970s, but now the issue has rolled and rolled," he said. "It is a small stone that has become a giant rock." Certainly the Spanish problems, which started with overspending in regional governments, have become very big mountains indeed. On Thursday, credit agency Fitch slashed Spain's rating by three notches, from A to BBB. Worse still, Fitch said Spain would likely remain slumped in recession this year and next, rather than stage a mild recovery in 2013, denting hopes of reducing the 25 per cent national unemployment rate. Eurozone officials have signalled that they are willing to offer Spain a bail-out if requested, amid fears that the government's already over-stretched public finances will be unable to rescue its troubled banking sector, which was wrecked by the bursting of the country's property bubble. Spain's most stricken bank, Bankia S.A., needs €18.9 billion in government aid, but Spain only has €5 billion left of a bail-out fund set up in 2009 to help banks. A report by the IMF estimates that the banks need at least €40 billion to stay afloat. Iif it does accept outside help, Spain will attempt to portray the package as a "bailout-lite", which will focus purely on helping the banks rather than filling Spanish government coffers. As such, it will minimise the imposition of extra austerity measures - which are already biting hard - and structural reforms imposed from outside. That, Madrid hopes, will mean the "Men in Black" keep their distance, as least in the eyes of the residents of towns like La Linea, anyway. Not that they will probably be watching. "We are desperate here, all we ask for is to be paid. " said protester Eduardo Izaguirre, 56. "It is not much. But we need them to give us that."

Spain is in trouble

Spain is in trouble, on the face of it, because its small banks - known as cajas - fuelled an insane property boom that went bust. They didn't do complex structured finance deals like Lehman Brothers; indeed they were the opposite of "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism - being small and locally owned. But behind the pure economic story is a more complex political-economic crisis that could, even now, send Spain the same way as Greece, shattering the eurozone in the process and placing the whole European project in grave doubt. You can see how badly the crisis has hit people at the "Utopia" apartment block in Seville. It's a modern, newly-built, five-storey complex next to a busy road. The flats are small: perfect for young professionals with their taste for minimalist furniture. But the company that built the flats went bust and now the whole place has been squatted by families turfed out of their own homes due to repossession. “ Start Quote The moment people think Europe is letting us fall, people will stop complaining and start protesting.” Raul Limon Journalist, El Pais Toni Rodriquez leads me around the darkened corridors (the electricity company has cut the power supply). "We had weekly meetings for four months and we realised we were all in the same situation and finally we decided to do something about it. When we took over the building I was frightened, because I've seen things on TV where they drag people out. The banks need to adapt the mortgage system to avoid kicking people out of their homes." Toni, aged 44, is one of a tight group of women - mainly cleaning workers - who've organised the occupation. They all have working age children who are unemployed. They resent the banks for kicking them out of their homes, and the politicians for bailing them out. Around the edges of the project move people from a completely different demographic: the so-called "indignados" of the M15 movement - anti-globalist youth with trademark tattoos and piercings. The indignados made world headlines last year after massive occupation protests in the public squares of Spanish cities, in turn sparking the global Occupy movement. Toni Rodriquez organised the occupation of a Seville block of flats When you see the Utopia flats, draped with banners announcing "no homes without people, no people without homes", you see what happens when official politics abandons people. Very ordinary, indeed anti-political people have begun to turn to Spain's radical youth for help. They in turn have found a purpose, here and elsewhere, outside mainstream politics, which they despise. For at the heart of Spain's economic problem is its political system. In the first place the system of autonomous regions, with their own budgets and right to borrow on the financial markets. That delayed Spain's budget adjustment by a year, during which the central government cut spending but the regions raised both spending and borrowing. A large part of the government's current deficit reduction plan depends on getting regions like Andalusia, of which Seville is the capital, to slash their budgets. On top of the regions, you have the cajas. Bankia, the bank at the centre of the crisis, was created only last year through a merger of seven troubled cajas. They merged their debts, took bailout money from the government, sunk some of their bad debts into a government fund and sold shares in the merged company, appointing former IMF boss Roderigo Rato as the CEO. What could go wrong? Well it is now clear that Bankia was hiding bad debts that will need 24 billion euros to sort out. The two biggest cajas that formed Bankia were both effectively controlled by local politicians from the ruling Partido Popular. One has recently walked away with a 14m euro payoff, despite presiding over the biggest bank collapse in Spanish history.