ABSTRACT
Spanish semi-public savings banks have been transformed into private for-profit corporations supplying financial markets with raw materials and diffusing complex financial products among popular classes. In Spain, the role of branch managers is stronger than anywhere else for a simple reason: in 2008, the concentration of bank branches was the highest in the world, when compared to Italy, the United States, France or Germany. Spanish savings banks, as defined by the 1835 law, were self-financed, non-profit institutions accepting very low deposits placed into mounts of piety—pawnshops—to make small loans to the underprivileged. In the early 2000s, brokers and financial marketers began to focus on low- and very low-income families with whom savings banks' branch managers had few, if any, prior commercial relationships. According to branch managers, the liberalization of savings banks led to a profound transformation of their occupation in the early 1990s.
