Is my money safe in Santander?

Before you've completed typing "Is my money safe …" into Google, up pops "in Santander" as the suggested question. Evidently a lot of people are worried that Spain's crisis-hit economy and bombed-out banking sector will affect their savings in Santander, Spain's second biggest bank and the UK's fifth biggest. Indeed, nearly all of the "Is my money safe" suggestions on Google are about Spain, although people also ask about Barclays. The good news is that one of the first results that comes up on Google was written by the team here at Guardian Money. The basic answer is that Santander UK is wholly ringfenced from Santander Spain, and the Spanish parent company can't prop itself up by pinching capital from its UK operation. Even a collapse in the euro is likely to hurt the other major banks in Britain a lot more than Santander's UK operations. Still, we always recommend that savers do not put more than £85,000 in any UK bank (Santander included). That's the maximum bailout from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.