Luisa Pinales, who could no longer make mortgage payments after her business closed in 2007, sweeps her apartment in Madrid on March 5, 2012. She was evicted on April 27. The graffiti reads "Stop eviction". REUTERS/Juan Medina

Last week it emerged that almost one in four Spaniards is unemployed.  For young people, the situation is worse – the jobless rate among under 25-year-olds has reached an eye-watering 52 per cent. As incomes have fallen, many householders find it more difficult to keep up with their mortgage payments; eviction notices – like the one received in January by Luisa Pinales, pictured above – have been served. Meanwhile, the centre-right government of Mariano Rajoy is hewing desperately to a programme of austerity, in the hopes of meeting an EU-imposed target of reducing Spain’s budget deficit to 3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2013. To get a sense of how difficult that will be, consider that in 2011, Spain’s budget deficit was 8.5 per cent of GDP. Investors in the sovereign debt markets can sense the scale of the challenge, and have demanded a higher premium for lending to the beleaguered government. Read more