By Fiona Maharg-Bravo

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Mariano Rajoy’s defiant stance has worked – at least in part. After the Spanish prime minister unilaterally changed the country’s 2012 budget deficit target, euro zone finance ministers allowed him some leeway – as long as Spain maintains its goal of shrinking it to 3 pct of GDP next year. The compromise allows both sides to save face for now.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Spain’s latest bank reform deserves two cheers. The country has finally owned up to the fallout from its housing bust by requiring lenders to set aside an extra 50 billion euros to cope with possible losses on their 323 billion euros of exposure to property developers. While this will help, the deteriorating economy means more provisions will be needed. The bigger listed banks can cope, but the state will still be on the hook for part of the cleanup.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo and Neil Unmack

The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own.

Spanish regions are like teenagers pushing their parents to the limit. The country’s 17 autonomous regions, which are responsible for education and health (over 50 percent of total government spending), missed their fiscal targets again last year, and caused the country to miss its own. Madrid faces the same dilemma as the European Commission when it comes to ensuring compliance of member countries with the stability pact: how to force the regions to follow the rules?

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Spain’s new government can’t afford to ease into the New Year. It has inherited a deficit of more than 8 percent of GDP in 2011 and wants to stick to the target of bringing it down to 4.4 percent this year just as the economy is slowing down. The maths looks difficult, if not impossible.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Spain wants its banking sector to pay for its sins – literally. Banco Sabadell is taking troubled lender CAM off Madrid’s hands, and Spain’s bank-backed deposit guarantee fund is helping by making a big capital injection. Such deals minimise the cost to the taxpayer, but aren’t a free lunch for the state and won’t solve the sector’s problems.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

The arrival of a new boss is always unsettling. What role Spain’s new government will play in the corporate world is still unclear after the landslide victory of Mariano Rajoy’s People’s Party last Sunday. Unlike the outgoing socialists, the conservative party was notorious for its heavy interventionism in the 1990s. But Spain has come a long way since then. And Rajoy should be too busy stabilising the economy to rock the boat in Spain’s boardrooms.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Spain is suffering from a real estate hangover. One of the biggest problems facing Spanish banks is what to do with the real estate loans and foreclosed properties left over from the construction boom and bust. Now the opposition People’s party, which is expected to decisively win elections on Nov. 20, is said to be mulling the creation of a state-backed bad bank. Such an approach has been tried in Ireland with mixed success. It would be a high-risk strategy for Spain.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo and Neil Unmack
The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own.

Spain’s next government was never going to have much time to ease into the job. But the recent steep rise in borrowing costs – triggered by problems in Greece and Italy – will make life even tougher for Mariano Rajoy, whose opposition Popular Party is tipped by polls to win the elections on Nov. 20 by a wide margin.

By Fiona Maharg-Bravo
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Few statistics about the Spanish economy are as depressing as the unemployment rate, which hit 21.5 percent in the third quarter. This is part of the hangover after a decade-long construction boom and a symptom of an uncompetitive economy. Yet even as the country’s jobless rate scales new heights, Spain’s exporters are surprisingly resilient. The snag is that there aren’t enough of them to get the country growing again anytime soon.

By Fiona Maharg Bravo
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Europe’s bank recap exercise misses the point in Spain. EU governments are hoping to restore confidence in the financial system by forcing lenders to clear a higher capital hurdle after recognising potential losses on sovereign debt. But the problem with Spanish banks is their exposure to real estate, not government bonds.