Spain's finance minister is denying suggestions that the country was close to needing a bailout last month.

Spanish union leader Ignacio Fernandez Toxo told Spanish television Monday that in an August 17 meeting with labor and business leaders, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he had seen "the edge of the abyss, in the form of a bailout for the Spanish economy."

But Finance Minister Elena Salgado said Tuesday in a radio interview that Spain was not close to needing a bailout, then or now.

Yields on Spanish bonds, a direct measure of investor jitters over a country's debt, skyrocketed to euro-era highs in early August, prompting the European Central Bank to intervene in the markets to get the country's borrowing costs down.