Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro on Tuesday came out with a curiously belated but welcome surprise for civil servants earning less than 1.5 times the minimum wage by explaining that, unlike the rest of Spain's public sector workers, they will not be deprived of their traditional extra monthly payment at Christmas time.

Speaking in the Senate, Montoro took pains to emphasize that the exception was included in the official state gazette (BOE) published last Saturday, which contained details of a series of spending cuts and tax hikes worth 65 billion euros over the next two and a half years, the biggest austerity package since democracy was restored in Spain over 30 years ago.

...

The minister said the dispensation for lower wage earners would affect between 10,000 and 15,000 state employees, but did not offer figures for civil servants at other levels of the public administration, whose total workforce amounts to more than 2.69 million.