Soon you will get a phone call from your friendly bank representative flogging the latest issue of bonds from the Generalitat of Catalunya. What patriotic Catalans they must be to spend so much time and effort helping out our struggling government.
Well, not so much.
What is missing from the picture is the juicy commission that the bankers get from convincing overly patriotic and perhaps not so financially astute citizens when they sell the bonds at retail. Exactly what the commissions are is not clearly disclosed.
However, if you want to buy an equivalent bond for a much better price (ie higher interest), have your bank open up a renta-fija account for you and you can buy the bonds yourself.
Boerse Frankfurt has a nice bond search engine that you can use to see what’s going on with Generalitat debt:
| Name | ISIN | Last price | Maturing on |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 09/14 MTN | CH0105004060 | 16.84% | 1/10/2014 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 10/16 MTN | CH0110411532 | 15.74% | 24/03/2016 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 11-13 | ES00000950L4 | 12.01% | 4/4/2013 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 02-12 | ES0000095770 | 11.19% | 30/09/2012 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 06/16 | ES0000095895 | 10.20% | 15/11/2016 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 04-14 | ES0000095838 | 9.13% | 16/07/2014 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 05-15 | ES0000095861 | 7.90% | 15/09/2015 |
| GEN. CATALUNYA 10/15 MTN | XS0499156080 | 6.59% | 7/4/2015 |
The first two bonds are kind of interesting… they were issued in 2009 in Swiss Francs. You have to wonder what kind of stupidity was involved there. The ones with an ES prefix are regular Spanish law bonds and the XS one trades in Luxemburg.
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