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Financial crises are not unique to current financial systems. Are crises alike? Have they become more frequent, longer lasting and more severe since the 20 th century? What does history tell us? The objective of this paper is to study the financial crises that have occurred in Spain over the last 150 years. We consider different types of crises (banking, currency and stock market crises), together with all their possible combinations, estimate their frequency by period and measure their length and depth. The main conclusion we obtain is that Spanish crises have been more frequent than in the rest of the world and have been more severe and more complex since 1973, as the 2007 crisis is confirming.

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In markets with imperfect information, when the public doubts a bank's solvency, many raise their estimate of the probability that other banks will also fail. As Baltemsperger explains, runs occur because a cooperative solution among depositors cannot be enforced. Collectively, depositors have no incentive to run but, individually, each will try to be the first to collect deposits at their full value. See E. Baltemsperger, 'The economic theory of banking regulation', in E. G. Furubotn and R. Richter (eds), 77ie Economics and Law of Banking Regulation (Saarbrticken, 1990), p. 5. 5 This idea of 'regulatory capture' is associated especially with A. Downs, An Economic llicory of

The 1976/1977 crisis was the most severe in Spanish history, but the losses associated with the 2008 crisis are huge. This paper compares these two great banking crises and identifies the main parallels and differences between them. Is the current crisis as severe as that of 1976? What is the impact on the banking and financial sectors? We show that the 1976 crisis is being surpassed by the 2008 crisis in terms of the decline in GDP, industrial production and unemployment, and that these two events have had at least a similar impact in terms of output gap and output loss. Finally, the financial impact measured by different financial indicators confirms the greater severity of the 2008 crisis.