Spain: Parliament Protest As Jobless Rate Rises

Protesters and riot police have clashed outside Spain's parliament following the release of official figures that show the country's unemployment rate has hit a record high.

The violence broke out after demonstrators tried to push down the police barriers standing between them and the parliament building in Madrid.

Fifteen people were arrested and 14 police were injured.

The demonstration, organised by the "Stand Up" Platform, called for an "indefinite siege" around parliament with the aim of forcing the government to step down.

Around 1,000 protesters took to the streets of the capital and authorities deployed 1,400 police to the area in anticipation of violence.

The protest coincided with the latest jobless figures. Protests have become commonplace in Spain as austerity measures and tax hikes have dug deep into the pockets of people, leaving many without jobs.

Figures for the first quarter of the year released by the country's National Statistics Institute show the unemployment rate has soared to 27.2%, worse than economists had predicted.

The number of those without jobs has surpassed six million for the first time - with 237,400 people added to the grim unemployment statistics over the period taking the total to 6.2 million.

Economists had expected the unemployment rate to grow from 26% in the final quarter of 2012 to 26.5%.

Spain's problems stem from the collapse of its once-booming real estate sector in 2008, which resulted in a facility of up to 100 billion euros (£85bn) in rescue funds being made available by its eurozone partners.

The government has launched a series of financial and labour reforms and pursued a raft of spending cuts and tax increases that have managed to reduce a swollen deficit but been blamed for choking economic growth.

Despite the measures, Spain had the highest budget deficit among the 17 European Union countries that use the euro in 2012.

Its Budget, due to be announced later today, is expected to focus less on austerity and include more measures to stimulate activity in the economy.

A key fear behind Spain's soaring unemployment crisis is that it is damaging the country's prospects by consigning a generation of young people to financial hardship.

The official statistics agency for the European Union, Eurostat, said earlier this month that youth unemployment in Spain had topped almost 56%.

Analysts expect the Budget to try and address the issue, despite the spending constraints faced by Mariano Rajoy's government, as he took office in December 2011 on the back of a core pledge to create jobs.