One in five people in recession-hit Spain would like to ditch the euro and return to the peseta, a poll published on Sunday showed.
1:45PM BST 09 Sep 2012
wenty-one percent of Spaniards said they would like to return to the peseta, the country's currency until it switched over to the euro in 2002, according to the Metroscopia survey published in daily newspaper El Pais.
Seventy percent of those surveyed said Spain should stay within the common currency bloc and the rest were undecided or refused to answer.
Disenchantment with the common currency has grown in Spain and other member countries due to the European sovereign debt crisis, with some economists arguing that abandoning the euro could help economically troubled nations boost their competitiveness and make it easier for them to pay off their debts.
But other economists warn that the costs of leaving the euro would outweigh the benefits as it would likely cause a collapse in the banking system and inflation to explode in a nation that makes such a move.
Spain's government is tipping an economic decline of 1.5pc this year, and another 0.5pc in 2013.
The Spanish economy, the eurozone's fourth largest, grew just 0.4pc last year.
In June Madrid secured a eurozone rescue loan of up to €100bn to save banks still struggling after a 2008 property market crash.
But many investors and analysts believe there is no doubt that Spain, which faces about 30 billion euros in debt repayments in October, will be forced to ask for a full-fledged bailout for its economy.
The survey polled 1,004 voting-age individuals on September 5 and 6.