The spin:
Not a rumour, was publicised a while back here (say approx two weeks) and is basically a lower cost arm of Iberia short haul that will feed into the long haul Latin america network which will be expanded. Therefore cheap short haul will become profit making whilst long haul lays the golden egg.
In reality:
Iberia tried the same thing with Clickair and as soon as it started to encroach on what IB unions saw as "their routes" things started getting tasty. Its all well and good management saying "Right, we need EU routes at a cheaper rate so we'll simply set up a parallel carrier" but the unions won't accept it.
Expect a bit of posturing from both sides and the status quo being maintained for the short term. IB's big problem is that they sold off the family silver to inflate their balance sheet during 2004-2007 thinking that a private equity fund would buy them at 10 x profits. They didn't as the Spanish banks said "we want 15x profits". Now the airline is left with little strategic planning in place and no idea where its focus will be...