Would you be embarrassed if a man in a top hat and tuxedo followed you into a restaurant and silently joined your lunch date? How about a trio of men with more to love in superhero costumes requesting that your neighbors send donations to assist you in your financial situation?

In Madrid, make sure your bills are paid off or you might be visited by one of these strange characters. The recession has hit Spain hard. Official figures demonstrate that the unemployment rate has sky rocketed, reaching 19.3 percent. That is one of the highest rates in Europe. Around four million people are not working. That's the same number of jobless people as France and Italy put together. One business is flourishing however, that business is debt collection.

Spanish law is pretty lax when it comes to paying back debt. They allow 95 days to settle bills, not like the 30 day time periods in other parts of Europe. This ,in addition to the fact that Spanish courts give the matter low priority put collection companies in high demand.

One agency, El Cobrador del Frac - which translates as "The Debt Collector in Top Hat and Tails" - has more than 250 collectors, and an equal number of secretaries and investigators.Their aim is to work out some sort of deal and retrieve some sort of money, not to run after people without the means to pay.

For the agency, the new and most popular business is coming from constructive trade which is currently suffering from a huge industry slowdown. Homeowners owe cash to contractors, contractors owe cash to construction companies, construction companies owe equipment makers, and so forth and so on.

Last year, the debt collection agency had a wedding hall get in touch with them over a couple who did not pay the $83,000 bill for their extravagant wedding. The agency got their hands on a wedding guest list and began calling up guests one by one on the phone and asking them if they had the chicken or the lobster, and then asked them where to send the bill. Eventually the shamed couple paid up.

These ideas are interesting, (I guess that's one way to describe it) but they won't be this effective in due time. In this time of economic hardship too many people have debts and they honestly cannot pay. And to these people, it does not make any difference how much you humiliate them.