Spain's lingering bank crisis weighs on economic recovery MADRID - Like many of the immigrants who flocked to Spain not long ago, Klever Cordova was enticed by the prospect of easy employment and easy credit - the chance to leave behind the troubled economy of his native Ecuador and become a homeowner in a booming euro-zone country. That was six years ago, before the collapse of the miracle that was the Spanish real estate market and the country's slide into economic hardship. His job as a highway construction worker is long gone, and his $300,000 mortgage is now one more bit of straw in a load of bad debt that is weighing down Spain's banks, undermining hopes of an economic recovery and raising new perils for the global financial system. Spain's debts can seem modest in comparison with some of the other countries such as Greece and Italy swept up in Europe's financial crisis. Compared with the size of its economy, Spain's government borrowed far less than most in the euro zone. But the country's financial system is heaving under the growing burden of bad real estate, development and mortgage loans. And if the banks lose their footing, many investors and economic analysts fear that the cost of saving the financial system will fall to the Spanish government, sending its own debts soaring. Estimates of the amount needed by the banking system vary widely, from a few tens of billions of dollars to upwards of $100 billion - a number that would push Spain's government debt into dangerous territory. Spain, the euro zone's fourth-largest economy, is already facing steep borrowing costs. The government has to pay about 6 percent interest to persuade skittish investors to lend it money. Spain has been under pressure by the International Monetary Fund and global investors to get out ahead of the mounting financial problems. "The system needs a dose of realism," said Jose Luis Suarez, a finance professor at the IESE Business School in Madrid. The banks "will have to have some form of public assistance." On Friday, Spanish officials are expected to announce what they hope will be a definitive plan, committing more public money to back the banking system. In particular, the effort would support a group of ailing "cajas," local savings and loans that over a decade ago won permission to operate outside their home regions and began lending heavily to real estate development firms. The plan could also require banks to clean up the books of their core banking operations by setting up separate businesses and then transferring to them loans made for land and development projects. Officials took what was regarded as a major step this week when they signaled a virtual state takeover of Bankia, a conglomerate created by the merger of several ailing savings and loans that was labeled "vulnerable" in a recent IMF report. The developing plan for state help, and an IMF call last week for "swift and decisive" action by Spanish authorities, led to the departure this week of Bankia chief executive Rodrigo Rato, himself a former IMF managing director.