Mortgage delinquency in Spain

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Spain’s banks dealt dose of loan reality

MADRID | By Ilan Brat and Christopher Bjork at The Wall Street Journal via Presseurop | It has puzzled Spanish bank analysts for years: Why did the country’s mortgage delinquency rate rise so slowly even as unemployment soared above 26%? A big part of the answer—revealed by a spate of bank earnings reports in recent days—is that Spanish lenders had been making their loan books look healthier than they really were by refinancing big numbers of loans to struggling homeowners and businesses.