Rhyme and reason
One advantage of the English language is that the word banker has an obvious rhyme. The Spaniards share the sentiment but not the rhyme. To the best of my knowledge this is a vastly oversimplified but basically accurate description of the Spanish banking system. Essentially, in recent history, there have been three types of "bank". The first is the standard commercial bank; the bank raises capital and then lends money to people and organisations in order to make a business profit. The second is the Caja de Ahorros, a Savings Bank where the money for loans came from the deposits of the savers. Many of the Savings Banks in Spain originally loaned money against pawned items. The profit from the operation is used to support loans to savers and a certain percentage is diverted to a charitable foundation to support "good causes." The third institution, the Rural Savings Bank, has syndicalist or co-operative roots and was originally developed to promote agriculture i...