Europe, Spain | featured news

The International Monetary Fund says it has not been asked by Spain for a bailout and has not begun preparing one.

Nineteen people, including 13 children, died Monday in a fire that raged through an upscale shopping mall in Doha, Qatar’s Interior Ministry said. The fire started late in the morning and centered on a children’s play area in the Villaggio Mall, a glittering collection of shops and indoor canals in Doha, the capital, frequented by expatriates in the oil-rich emirate. The ministry did not immediately provide the nationalities of those killed. Local news reports said no Qatari children were among the dead, and Reuters said four of the children who died in the fire were from Spain. French media reported that one French child died in the fire.

Spanish 10-year borrowing costs neared the 7 percent danger level and Bankia shares hit record lows on Monday after the government, struggling to sort out its finances, proposed putting sovereign debt into the struggling lender.

Stocks fell and the spread between Spanish and German bonds hit a record wide, as the prospect of fresh elections heightened concerns about the likelihood of Greece exiting the euro zone.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Sunday defended his government's harsh austerity measures aimed at correcting Spain's grim economic forecast, one day after tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets in protest of his handling of the country's worst crisis in decades.

Students are protesting on Barcelona's elegant boulevards, public-sector wages are being cut for the second time in three years and resentment is growing against the central government and beneficiaries of bank bailouts.

Spain's government tried to plug a gaping hole in the country's banking system on Friday, but the fourth such attempt to tackle the fallout of a property crash fell short of expectations.

News that Spain’s economy entered another recession renewed worries about the fragility of Europe’s finances on Monday and nudged stocks lower. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 35 points to 13,192 shortly after noon Eastern.

Spain's latest credit rating downgrade has thrown into sharp relief the need to revive a banking sector that could need another 100 billion euros to cover bad debts in order to avoid exposing another weak flank in the euro zone crisis.

The European Union has no plans to activate its emergency funds to recapitalize Spanish bank and Spain had no need to appeal for funds to do so, the European Commission said on Thursday.