Things starting to hot up in Madrid

Spain’s experienced budget minister Christobal Montoro was the country’s first politician to admit that help was needed to bail out the banks and all eyes have now turned to what form that rescue will take, writes Kyran Fitzgerald

It is crunch time for Spain and — many now believe — for the whole euro project.

On Tuesday, the country’s experienced budget minister, Christobal Montoro, became the first Spanish minister to acknowledge the country could not afford to rescue its troubled banks on its own and faced being shut out of the sovereign debt market.