Business life reflects Spain's diversity. For all Madrid's power and its 3m people, Barcelona, bom of textiles, still asserts its place as the country's industrial heart. Cars, perhaps because they came late, are built in half a dozen places, from Vigo to Valencia. Not by chance, the two giant banks, BSCH (ex-Santander) and BBVA (formerly Bilbao Vizcaya) began life on the well-off north coast. So where is the equivalent Barcelona bank? It is much smaller, but it exists: La Caixa, biggest of 40-odd mutually owned savings banks, cajas de ahorro, mostly local, many small, that still thrive and even multiply. Start with the private-sector banks. They have some 17,000 branches (30% up since 1980) and 126,000 employees (30% down). The two big fish were both hatched in 1999, after a series of mergers, often with large but undynamic ex-state banks. With four-fifths of all bank assets between them, they have been doing nicely, not least because both have plunged heavily into Latin America and found the margins fat. But how do the minnows survive?
展开▼
机译：商业生活反映了西班牙的多样性。对于整个马德里的权力和300万人口来说，纺织品之都巴塞罗那仍然称其为该国工业中心。从维哥（Vigo）到瓦伦西亚（Valencia），汽车可能建在六个地方，也许是因为它们来晚了。并非偶然，两家大型银行BSCH（前桑坦德银行）和BBVA（前毕尔巴鄂比斯开银行）开始在小康的北海岸生活。那么等效的巴塞罗那银行在哪里？它的规模要小得多，但它确实存在：La Caixa是40多个共同拥有的储蓄银行中最大的银行，cajas de ahorro，主要是本地的，很多很小的，仍然蓬勃发展甚至倍增。从私人银行开始。他们有大约17,000个分支机构（自1980年以来增加了30％）和126,000名员工（减少了30％）。经过一系列的合并，两条大鱼都在1999年被孵化，通常合并有大型但没有动力的前州银行。他们之间的银行资产占五分之四，表现良好，这不仅是因为两者都已大量投入拉丁美洲，并发现利润丰厚。但是小鱼如何生存？
展开▼
