The Spanish banking sector is getting used to judicial setbacks. Unfortunately, they’re not the sorts of setbacks we’d like to see. This could have been an article on the elimination of the legal privileges — e.g., the existence of a state-owned central bank in charge of bailing out its (equally) irresponsible fellows — that financial businesses are nowadays granted worldwide. Eliminating those privileges would have been a setback for the banking sector, but good for everyone else. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s been happening: no liberalization of that sort whatsoever has taken place.
Rather, several recent rulings from Spanish courts have systematically encroached on the individual’s right to contract with others — and the public opinion is gleefully celebrating their decisions.
It all started back in 2013 when the Spanish Supreme Court declared the nullity of the so-called “floor clauses,” which simply constituted a minimum level set on the payment of interests on (mortgage) loans and which were included in many of such contracts during the housing bubble. These clauses were commonly accompanied by “roof clauses,” whose content was exactly the opposite (i.e., a maximum interest rate) and yet did not experience any ban by the judicial authorities.
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