We analyse the default behaviour of Spanish households immediately before and after the recent financialcrisis. Using several waves of the Survey of Household Finances (a tri-annual survey of financial positionof Spanish households), we show that younger, poorer and less well educated households are mostlikely to default. A key contribution is to explain the change in arrears since the onset of the crisis.Using information on credit applications and acceptances we decompose the change in arrears among allhouseholds into a contribution from four parts: (i) changes in characteristics; (ii) changes in applications;(iii) changes in acceptances; (iv) changes in arrears among borrowers. We show the last is the most important contribution.