Spanish Minister of Economy Luis de Guindos has insisted that his country doesn't need to be bailed out at all as he defended Spain's progress on deficit reduction.

"There is a little bit of misunderstanding... Spain doesn't need a bailout at all," he said at a conference held yesterday at the London School of Economics where protestors held up signs saying that "Spain is for sale".

The Spanish government has been reluctant to even use the term "bailout" though it has already negotiated a €100bn package from the Eurozone to save its financial sector.

An independent auditor report found that final capital needs for the country's banking sector have been determined to be only €59.3bn and Madrid has yet to officially request a fixed amount.

Yet De Guindos insisted that "what we are doing is what we think is the correct thing not only for Spain, but for the future of the Eurozone."

He also appeared to be suggesting that if the European Central Bank (ECB) intervened in the secondary sovereign bond markets it would not be a "bailout".

"(The ECB has) demanded that in order to intervene in the secondary sovereign debt market they want certain conditionality that are not going to be very far to the situation we have now in Spain, in terms of the [European Union] excessive deficit procedure or in terms of the European semester," he said.

Both ECB President Mario Draghi and International Monetary Funds Managing Director Christine Lagarde have both made clear that they are ready to help Spain if they receive the request.

JM

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