"We fear things are likely to get worse before they get better"
- Martin van Vliet, a senior euro-region economist at ING Bank
Spain sank into recession in the first quarter of 2012. The economy contracted 0.3 per cent, after shrinking by the same amount in the previous quarter, Madrid-based National Statistics Institute data showed on Monday.
"We fear things are likely to get worse before they get better," Martin van Vliet, a senior euro-region economist at ING Bank in Amsterdam said in a note.
"The recession will almost certainly deepen in the coming quarters, pushing unemployment to even more dramatic highs."
"The wheels are very clearly coming off the economy," Jefferies economist David Owen said. "It wouldn't surprise me to see a very significant decline in GDP both in the second and third quarters this year, and it's still reasonably easy to envisage GDP to be down about 1.5 percent this year."
© Dukascopy Bank SA