For whichever reason, in southern European countries it is simply not as common as in many northern European and other countries, among which the United States, to attribute more popular or easy recognisable terminology to law packages or otherwise legal arrangements.
So when in the eye of the world's press and financial analysists, Spain avoids the term "rescate" as the closest of translations of a what the world has come accustomed to as "bail-out", this may very well be because it is not - legally - exactly that.
Bail is an equally old term, throughout most of history associated with criminal offences and still used as such today by most common law jurisdicitons, pretty much those Anglo-Saxon countries where loud voices now insist on Spain having sollicited a "bail-out" independently of how Spain would want to circumscribe its formal application . There is no question that most of the world has embraced English as the dominant language in finance today but I sense some exaggeration in the slang being thrown around, not so very different from the evolving manner wherein obnoxious teenagers exchange text messages with one another .... dudes.
The reverse also happens. When Portugal took note of rating agencies' attibution of near "junk" level, the population revolted by collecting and mailing garbish to the head offices of those agencies, on the simple basis of the insult taken that a country's (financial) status had been downgraded to what was translatable to "lixo", not exactly the definition Michael Milken had in mind for high yield debt issuers.
History, a language, a legal system are components of what make up a society or nation even and the cross border mix of them is what makes the world such an interesting place, all the more reason to take particular care in their reading.
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