The strategies pursued have involved using the least possible amount of public funds, concentrating on cleaning up bank balance sheets by demanding additional provisions, raising capital requirements, encouraging mergers, transforming savings banks and improving their governance, reducing capacity, increasing efficiency by bolstering the size of banks, making the worst managed banks disappear and minimising the time the State has a presence in banks in which it had to intervene. The results mean we can be encouraged by what we see Spain has been able to do during these difficult years of crisis. As regards cleaning up bank balance sheets, since late 2007 to the end of last year provisions have been increased by € billion. Once this year, thanks to the recent legislation, an additional write-down of € billion is completed, a figure of € billion will have been reached, namely 14% of GDP. As regards capitalisation, deposit institutions have during this period increased their capital both in absolute terms and in relation to their assets, thanks partly to the fact that the legislation passed in 2011 and 2012 has imposed on Spanish banks capital requirements greater than those required by the Basel III calendar. As regards capacity, although the plans are not complete, there have been reductions of 12% in the number of branch offices and 10% in the number of staff, with sharper falls at savings banks (of the order of 16% and 13%, respectively).
Since 2013, and in addition, naturally, to our contribution to the preparatory work, we have been working hard at the Banco de España in two directions: a)  first, to adapt our structure to the new needs; and  b)  second, to encourage the presence of experts from the Banco de España at the ECB. A few weeks ago a reform of the Directorate General Banking Supervision was approved, designed to create a structure that mirrors that of the ECB, to facilitate interaction between the two authorities and achieve efficient management of resources. The new organisation replicates the arrangements envisaged by the ECB: two departments will be responsible for ongoing supervision of the significant banks, a third will be responsible for the less significant banks, and a fourth will perform the so-called “horizontal” tasks, in addition to on-site inspections of the significant banks. To underpin the position of the Banco de España’s representatives on the SSM’s governing bodies, a new SSM Coordination Service was created in February , which will be responsible for analysing and monitoring non-Spanish significant banks. Regarding the Spanish presence in the SSM, our experts have been very successful in the ECB selection processes, both at senior management and junior analyst levels, which testifies to their excellent qualifications and vast experience.