Banco Santander's net profit in 2013 rose to 4.37 billion euros, up 90.5 percent from a year earlier, due to lower provisioning needs.

In Spain, Santander had net profits of 478 million euros, down 45 percent form a year earlier.

Emilio Botín, chairman of the euro zone's largest bank by market share, said on Thursday that after several years of strengthening the balance sheets and capital, the group is now embarking on a period of "strong profit growth" in the coming years.

Despite the crisis, Santander's release boasted about the fact that it is one of the few lenders to have turned a profit "quarter after quarter for the last five years." This, said the bank, was thanks to its geographical diversification, which allowed 53 percent of earnings to come from developing markets and 47 percent from mature markets.

Latin America represented 47 percent of the group's profits, particularly Brazil with 23 percent, while Europe represented 43 percent. Spain contributed seven percent, Britain 17 percent and the United States 10 percent.

According to Santander, these results indicate "a turnaround" after the dwindling profits of recent years, themselves a result of the international economic crisis, which forced lenders to clean up their balance sheets.