It was to be Europe's tallest residential building, a monument to the boom years when the construction industry helped Spain's economy become one of the fastest growing in the world. Now, the In Tempo apartment block in Benidorm has become a metaphor for the madness of the 10-year building bonanza that brought the country to its knees. The 200 metre (650ft) high twin towers containing 269 flats are now the responsibility of the so-called "bad bank" established to consolidate the toxic assets of the country's bankrupt savings banks.

Benidorm has so many tower blocks that from the air it resembles Hong Kong more than the sleepy fishing town it once was. Despite these high-rise buildings, the 47-storey In Tempo, visible from six miles away, dwarfs everything in the area. It has been dogged by contractual problems and in 2011, 13 workers were injured, two of them seriously, when a lift collapsed.

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