This chapter focuses on Italy and Spain, which both witnessed profound changes in the main features of their financial sectors since 1990. The financial system of both countries was shaken at its foundations by two waves of economic shocks brought about by the European Single Market and Monetary Union and by the European sovereign debt crisis. The chapter compares how the two countries adjusted
... [Show full abstract] their domestic financial systems to these challenges. How did the process of adjustment materialize? How were the costs distributed among different domestic actors? What was the institutional outcome of this process? How similar or different have Italy and Spain become as a result of it? Is it still possible to consider them contiguous models of capitalism? The chapter answers these questions by testing the predictions derived from existing analyses of the Mediterranean model of capitalism.