EU bailout “not ruled out,” says leading PP lawmaker

As Spain braces itself for another week of turbulent market jolts and pressure from some of its EU partners to ask for a financial bailout, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy continued to push for greater investor confidence while at least one member of his Popular Party (PP) said Sunday that a Brussels rescue plan has not been ruled out.

“If in the end, because of course it is a scenario that hasn’t been ruled out, there is an intervention, it won’t be an Apocalypse,” said José María Beneyto, chairman of the foreign relations committee in Congress. “We will just have to live with it like Portugal has been doing in a relative peaceful way.”

Beneyto’s comments to Efe news agency were immediately rejected by the PP hierarchy, which, according to sources, believes that they could only cause more distress for Spain.

Ironically, Beneyto used the same word “Apocalypse” as Rajoy did on Saturday, when he told an economic gathering in Sitges that Spain was “not on the verge of an Apocalypse.”

Meanwhile, Socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said in Durango that if the Rajoy government wanted to drum up investor confidence it should “stop doing down Spanish institutions outside of Spain.”