Spanish jobless data next week is likely to be encouraging, the country’s Prime Minister said yesterday, hours before the start of protests in Madrid and other European cities against austerity imposed to tackle the debt crisis.

Mariano Rajoy told an economic conference the figures would show the economy has begun to turn a corner after slipping in and out of recession for five years.

“I’m not counting chickens here, however I recommend that you pay attention to unemployment and social security numbers on Tuesday the 4th... If the patterns we’ve seen are confirmed they will be clearly encouraging,” Rajoy said.

Unemployment in Spain, the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy, jumped to a record 27.2 per cent in April, fuelling a European debate over whether to ditch austerity policies and switch to reviving economic growth.

Tackling joblessness is a major challenge for the eurozone’s leaders. Germany’s Finance Minister warned last week that failure to solve youth unemployment – around a quarter of young people in the bloc cannot find work – could tear Europe apart.

While Spain and twice-bailed-out Greece have fared worst, unemployment hit new highs in both France and Italy in April and 12.2 per cent of the currency bloc’s workforce is jobless.

Protests against the ‘troika’ of international lenders that has rescued struggling states but demanded painful spending cuts and tax rises were planned in several countries yesterday.

Austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and the EU is blamed at least in part for the pain felt by families who are deep in debt or have lost their homes after property bubbles burst.

Demonstrators brought Germany’s financial centre, Frankfurt, to a standstill on Friday when they cut off access to the ECB and disrupted businesses in a protest against the institutions they blame for the grinding recession in southern Europe.