Sovereign haircuts / ESP

Spain

4 concluded restructurings, between 1823 and 1882. The earliest default they settle began in 1823. The worst cost creditors 100.0% of the present value of their claim, in 1823. The longest gap between a default and its settlement was 31 years.

Restructurings

36.7%

Median present-value haircut

100.0%

Worst present-value haircut

1 of 4

Cut face value by zero

$37.96B

Debt treated (2020 $)

Every restructuring

Two measures of the same deals, never combined. The present-value haircut discounts what creditors got against what they were owed; the face-value reduction counts only principal written off.

Present-value haircutFace-value reduction

Default	Settled	Years to settle	Present-value haircut	Face-value reduction	Debt treated (2020 $)	Source
1823	1823repudiated	0	100.0%	100.0%	$2.90B	Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
1823	1834	11	35.0%	0.0%	$5.55B	Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
1836	1867	31	19.0%	12.8%	$8.10B	Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
1872	1882	10	38.4%	54.5%	$21.41B	Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Debt treated is the amount restructured, deflated to constant 2020 US dollars in the source file. A negative haircut means the new instruments were worth more than the old claim. Methodology

Bond prices

4 of 4 Spain restructuring episodes have Waterloo prices during the restructuring interval

The haircut file dates episodes by year. Waterloo matches them by country code and plots a padded window from one year before default through one year after settlement.

The public Waterloo bond panel in this repo runs from Jan 1, 1822 to Dec 1, 1980. This selector uses price only, never pbid or pask, and shows one line per bond from one year before default to one year after settlement. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD”; it does not document normalization to face value. Across all 329 haircut episodes, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after Dec 1, 1980. Those two counts overlap.

Episode

Selected episode: default 1872, settled 1882, case 278, spell ESP_1872-1882. Window: Jan 1, 1871 to Dec 31, 1883.

GBP bond prices

Independent GBP y-axis; values are not scaled against another currency.

Bond legend (GBP)

5% Quicksilver Mortgage Bonds of 1870, due 1900 (GBP)

1-3% Bonds of 1851,1867,1869 (GBP)

6% National Lands Mortgage Certificates of 1871, due 1888 (GBP)

2% Bonds of 1877, due 1892 (GBP)

4% External Bonds of 1882 (GBP)

3% External Bonds of 1871 (GBP)

3% External Bonds of 1872 (GBP)

3% Loan of 1867 (GBP)

3% Bonds of 1869 (GBP)

560 monthly observations across 9 bonds. 480 of those observations fall inside the shaded restructuring interval. Earliest point in this window: Jan 1, 1871. Latest: Dec 1, 1883. One line equals one bond; no cross-bond average is computed.

Bond	Currency	ISIN	Obs.	First	Last
5% Quicksilver Mortgage Bonds of 1870, due 1900	GBP	not recorded	156	Jan 1, 1871	Dec 1, 1883
1-3% Bonds of 1851,1867,1869	GBP	not recorded	140	Jan 1, 1871	Dec 1, 1882
6% National Lands Mortgage Certificates of 1871, due 1888	GBP	not recorded	124	Jul 1, 1871	Oct 1, 1881
2% Bonds of 1877, due 1892	GBP	not recorded	83	Jan 1, 1877	Dec 1, 1883
4% External Bonds of 1882	GBP	not recorded	17	Aug 1, 1882	Dec 1, 1883
3% External Bonds of 1871	GBP	not recorded	13	Jan 1, 1872	Jan 1, 1873
3% External Bonds of 1872	GBP	not recorded	12	Mar 1, 1873	Mar 1, 1874
3% Loan of 1867	GBP	not recorded	8	Jan 1, 1871	Aug 1, 1871
3% Bonds of 1869	GBP	not recorded	7	Jan 1, 1871	Aug 1, 1871

Each option includes its case id and default-spell id. The chart includes every priced bond for that country in the window, so it does not identify bonds belonging to the selected restructuring. The one-year padding is a display window, one year either side; an editorial choice rather than a source-defined threshold. It uses waterloo_bonds.price only; pbid and pask are not averaged into it. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD” and does not document face-value normalization. GBP and USD observations use separate labelled panels and y-axes. Of the 329 episodes in the haircut file, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after 1980-12-01; these counts overlap. Later episodes show an absence message rather than an implied zero.

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo (bond-price panel) | Harvard Dataverse, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo Methodology

Default spells

Spell	From	To	Years	Restructurings
ESP_1823-1867	1823	1867	45	3
ESP_1872-1882	1872	1882	11	1

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Duration counts both endpoints. The spells table also carries a cumulative-haircut column; it is not published here because it does not reconcile with the per-episode haircuts, see the methodology. Methodology

Debt still in default

The Bank of Canada-Bank of England default database records no debt in default for Spain in its latest year.

Source: Bank of Canada-Bank of England Sovereign Default Database (CRAG) Bank of Canada terms (attribution). Includes domestic arrears, so it is not comparable with the debt-treated column above. Methodology

Methodology, the measures, and what this data cannot tell you