The third savings bank included in Kutxabank, the savings bank of Gipuzkoa (another province of the Basque Autonomous Community) has decided to postpone its decision until autumn. Thus privatisation will end the path for public banking in the Southern Basque Country, since the traumatic sank of the savings bank of Navarre occurred some years ago. A path started in 1850 with the creation of the first savings bank, the municipal savings bank of the city of Gasteiz will disappear in the near future.

The decision to privatize the public savings banks has generated a heated debate. A debate that when in 2011 the three savings banks merged into one went quietly is actually having a different development. Two are the reasons that have conditioned the steps taken in those last years; the necessity to organize more effectively the banking sector and the massive financial crisis of 2008. When the loan market cracked up in the USA and Europe, the banks and public savings banks of the Spanish State had to face the consequences of the bubble they had created themselves in the market. Even if the situation of the savings banks of the Basque Autonomous Community wasn´t as dramatic as other savings banks in Spain they too had to face with the consequences of wrong decision making. The investments on property speculation and the buying of now a days closed Andalusia´s CajaSur savings bank affected the foundations of Kutxabank. It is in this difficult context that Kutxabank has to deal with the word coming from Europe ordering to privatize all public services including savings banks.

Hence, if a surprise doesn´t occur there is no turning back from privatization. In the conventions in which they take part the clients, the workers and the founders, (representatives of the provincial administration) the political parties representing the public institutions (PP, PSOE and PNV) have a great majority. In support of the step that will be taken today they argue that the order to privatize the institution that holds more than half of the savings of the population comes from Brussels, and that the new Spanish law that regulates the area for the savings banks doesn´t allow any other alternative. On the other hand, those against privatization, basically the political coalition EH Bildu, the trade unions ELA and LAB and some popular movements helped by intellectuals defending public financing argue that the new law offers yet the possibility to maintain the public character of the savings banks. At the same time they denounce that those political parties arguing that privatisation is inevitable are the same ones that have negotiated the new law in Madrid.

The president of Kutxabank Mario Fernandez Peral, a well know banker and ex politician stated on February that up to 70% of the bank´s capital will be offered to the private capital. Since then the voices complaining that the process of privatisation has been “cooked” between two parts and for their benefit has become increasing; On the one hand there is the political stablishment represented actually in the Basque Autonomous Community by the PNV and the PP which represents the majority in Spain and which is being helped by the PSE, the Basque branch of the Spanish workers party. On the other hand the financial oligarchy of Biscay, also known as “the people from Neguri”, with Mario Fernandez himself as the visible head and wishing to recover the power he had when he was the president of Bilbao-Biscay Bank, before it merged with Argentaria.

Meanwhile the savings banks of Alava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa have seen the declain of their main objectives; the capability to offer the well being and the possibility to carry out social work. They have to deal with the loss of their property wealth, accumulated over a century due to the generosity of local administrations and being sold to foreign speculative funds, their network of offices and workers decreasing... Once the new banking fund becomes operational and stars operating through the medium of trusts instead of AGMs, that will be the moment in which the Basque public banking will die. From then on the Spanish government will be Kutxabank´s caretaker instead of the Basque parliament. Ekai group, an organisation very critical with kutxabank´s privatisation has defined this operation as a coup d´etat.

This is the way their adventure will end. The adventure of those managers elected by the representatives of the main political forces of the Basque Autonomous Government that once decided to expand to Spain and to become involved in speculative activities. The same ones that actually wish to keep controlling Kutxabank. At the same time the Basque Autonomous Government will lose its most important financial instrument and how this lose will affect to the “economic agreement” (a juridical instrument that regulates the taxation and financial relations between the General Administration of the Kingdom of Spain and the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country) is to be seen. The economic agreement that symbolises the autonomy of the Basque Autonomous Government.