The latest Financial Stability Report issued by Bank of Spain dated November 2017 provides an updated description of the Spanish banking sector. In a nutshell, some key references are as follows: (i) the NPL rate (tasa de morosidad) has gone down to 4.5% (meaning a decrease of 0.5% compared to 2016), although the impaired assets level is still high; (ii) recourse of Spanish banks to the Eurosystem continued at a high level but has at least not increased in the last two years (average allocation to Spanish entities was 22.2%); (iii) private deposits at banks and their patrimony on a consolidated basis have continued to increase, by 18%; (iv) the level of provisions due to asset deterioration has also decreased due to the better performance of activities and impaired assets (dudosos) have been reduced by 10% in the last year (impaired assets amount now 3.9% of total assets compared to 4.2% in 2016); and (v) common equity tier 1 capital ratio (“CEU”) has been reduced slightly to 11.9%. The report also evidences that the credit to SMEs in Spain went up 5.4% and that the Spanish banking system is more efficient than comparable systems in the main European jurisdictions and the European average.