MADRID - REAL Madrid have come under political fire in Spain following their imminent acquisition of football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.

Business leaders and politicians have criticised the Spanish giants for getting two huge loans from two of the country's biggest banks to finance their transfer for the Manchester United winger.

A spokesman for Caja Madrid savings bank said on Tuesday that it had lent Real 76.5 million euros (S$154.6 million), "half of the total".

The newspaper El Mundo also reported that Real had received another loan from Santander bank to pay for new players. Neither Santander nor Real would confirm the report.

El Mundo said the loans would be guaranteed by the 600 million euros that the club will receive from the Mediapro group for television broadcast rights for their matches.

However, Mr Lorenzo Amor, president of Spain's National Federation of Self-Employed Workers, told Bloomberg News: "It's not a very good example in such a serious economic situation. How many small and medium-sized businesses could have been saved with that amount of credit?"

Spain is stuck in its worst recession in 60 years, and banks are tightening lending as bad loans rose to 4.27 per cent of total credit in March, the highest since 1996, compared with 1.2 per cent a year earlier, the Bank of Spain said.

Some 87 per cent of self-employed workers and small businesses found it "difficult" to get credit in the first quarter, compared with 50 per cent a year earlier, Mr Amor said, citing 13,000 businesses surveyed by the Madrid-based federation.

Real, which had a debt of 563 million euros last June according to club accounts, had signed on Brazil's Kaka for as much as 68 million euros from AC Milan last week.

However, Economy Minister Elena Salgado said that the loan deals are a private matter of the club.

While she admitted that she was "surprised but not scandalised" by Real's offer, she urged the banks which have lent money to fund the deal to be equally generous to firms and families.

Last week, president Michel Platini of Europe's soccer governing body, Uefa, described the Ronaldo bid as "excessive" at a time when the world is in the grip of a severe financial crisis.

However, Real director-general Jorge Valdano retorted that spending large amounts on top players was in line with the economic theory that you have to invest to kickstart a struggling economy.

"That's exactly what we are doing, and engaging in a moral debate is missing the point," he told news agency Efe.

-- REUTERS, AFP