The Spanish Treasury has today placed almost 4.6 billion euros in a variety of long-term debt issues at slightly higher prices, reflecting the tension over the independence challenge in Catalonia.
The majority of the issue was in 5-year bonds, 3.20846 billion euros, with a stop-out rate of 0.552%, the highest since March, having been 0.223% last time.
Another 1.08607 billion euros have been placed in bonds that expire in 2029, reopening an old issue that still has more than 11 years to run, with a stop-out rate of 1.878%, again higher than the previous of 1.779%.
Finally, 304 million bonds have been sold indexed to the inflation of the Eurozone, with -0.036% stop-out rate compared to a previous 0.384%.
Despite tensions over the independence issue, investors have again shown their interest in long-term Spanish debt, as a demonstration of their confidence in the economic future of the country. In total almost 10.5 billion euros were sought, 2.3 times the 4.6 billion finally adjudicated.
Meanwhile, the Spanish risk premium softened slightly, ending up at 130 basic points, two less than during the first minutes of the session, after the performance of the Spanish and German 10-year bonds it's calculated based on reduced with respect to those recorded at the start of the day.
In the middle of strong tensions over the Catalan government's intention to unilaterally declare independence on Monday, consequences are already being felt on the economic stage. For example, ratings agency S&P yesterday put Catalonia's ratings on "credit watch negative", warning that they could fall "if the political tensions put the Spanish government's financial support at risk".
After this auction, the Treasury has already covered 86.3% of its gross issuance of medium- and long-term bonds of the regular funding programme, 114.7 billion out of a projected 132.9 billion. Including all debt, with today's sale the total reached 182.1 billion.