On Jan. 13, 2012, Standard&Poor's lowered its long- and short-term sovereign credit ratings on the Kingdom of Spain to 'A/A-1' from 'AA-/A-1+', assigned a negative outlook, and removed the ratings from CreditWatch negative. Subsequently, we revised our Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment on Spain to group '5' from group '4', and our industry risk score to '5' from '3'. We are lowering our long- and short-term ratings on Spain-based CaixaBank S.A. (CaixaBank) to 'BBB+/A-2' from 'A/A-1', and on its parent company Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de Barcelona (la Caixa) to 'BBB-/A-3' from 'BBB+/A-2'. We are removing the ratings from CreditWatch negative. The stable outlooks on CaixaBank and la Caixa reflect our view that CaixaBank should maintain a
