Debt of Spanish banks to ECB rises by 2.4 pct in Oct.

The total debt of Spanish banks to the European Central Bank (ECB) rose by 2.4 percent from September to October, according to provisional data published Friday by the Bank of Spain.

The bank reported Spanish banks owed a total of 138.924 billion euros (149.002 billion U.S. dollars) to the ECB in October, which meant a 10.2 percent fall, 15.864 billion euros less, when compared with the same month a year earlier.

The debt of the ECB represented 37.1 percent of the total eurozone debt in October, which is far below the 80 percent it had reached before the Spanish government requested a bailout for its banks in June 2012.

In August that year, debt peaked at 388.736 billion euros. (1 euro=1.07 U.S. dollars) Endite