Preference shares crisis brings chaotic protests to Galicia town hall meetings

A judge in Galicia has ordered NCG bank to return 72,960 euros to a couple from O Carballiño who invested their savings in preferential shares after ruling that the lender did not disclose all the conditions when the contract was signed, a lawyer announced on Thursday.

The sentence comes days after dozens of demonstrators who have lost money by investing in preferential shares at regional banks began staging noisy protests on a daily basis at town halls across Galicia.

On Monday, police in Ponteareas had to help the Popular Party mayor and his fellow councilors escape from the town hall via a window after unruly demonstrators blocked access to the building.

For the past several days demonstrators have been interrupting meetings in Vigo, Mos, Redondela, Nigrán, Oia, As Neves and O Porriño as they blame both the PP and the Socialists for inaction.

The government's orderly bank restructuring fund, known as FROB, is today expected to announce remedies to help investors who have lost money through preferential shares.

Demonstrators have been interrupting meetings in a number of towns

However, Galicia regional premier Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that any type of approved renegotiation with creditors — known in Spanish as a quita — will not mean that other arbitration underway between banks and their customers will automatically be suspended.

"It is our opinion that we need to continue studying all the current cases in which we suspect that there was a serious breach of information, which led clients to this situation," he said.

Núñez Feijóo said that his PP administration will continue working to help customers find a solution to this problem, which, he said "was created by other governments," and assured that Galicia was the only region in Spain that has "publicly supported" the affected families.

In Santiago de Compostela, lawyer Lisardo Núñez, who represents the Clients of Bank Services Association (Ausbanc), said during a press conference that NCG bank will have to pay the couple from O Carballiño, Ourense province, the entire amount they invested in 2004 including interest. Without identifying them, the lawyer described them as migrants who were "long-time clients of Caja de Ahorros de Ourense, who later became clients of Caixanova."

"Because they trusted the bank for years, they took up an offer one summer that the bank said was a 'privileged product' only being offered to 'preferred' and 'longtime' customers," he said.

Meanwhile, bank customers throughout Galicia who have lost money through the preferential shares have formed a platform. For the second time in a month, a special session of the Pazo de Mos town council in Pontevedra had to be postponed after bank clients interrupted the meeting. A spokesman for the group asked the mayor for an opportunity to address the council but she told the platform's representative that he would be given the chance after the meeting was over when the floor would be open for a question-and-answer session. Pandemonium broke out when members of the platform began shouting insults at the councilors, with the barbs mostly directed at the PP and Socialists.

Members of the Galician Nationalist bloc (BNG) decided to sit alongside platform members as a show of support. Xulio Vicente, a spokesman for the platform, criticized the Socialists for "not supporting" people who have been affected. Police had to escort the councilors from the town hall.