Spanish consumer prices rose 9.8% year-on-year in March, their fastest pace since May 1985 and a jump from 7.6% in February, flash data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Wednesday.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing economic fallout have fuelled inflation worldwide, especially through increasing prices of energy and grains.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said more expensive electricity and fuel and non-processed food accounted for almost three-quarters of the overall CPI increase. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected 12-month CPI to rise to 8% in March.
"It is bad data. Bad data that affects our economy, our society, particularly the more vulnerable groups," Sanchez told parliament.
Responding to concerns about the rising cost of living, his government passed a series of measures this week aimed at curbing energy prices.
As inflation in the euro zone speeds up, top European Central Bank officials have insisted the rise is temporary, with ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane describing high inflation as an imported shock that will fade away over time.
"We would still diagnose that this essentially is an imported inflation shock, it's a supply shock," Lane said. "Most of this inflation will fade away."
Central banks are facing a complicated policy dilemma between keeping calm amid the market turmoil while also responding to mounting price pressures.
INE data also showed Spain's EU-harmonised consumer price index rose 9.8% in the 12 months to March, faster than the 8.1% expected by analysts polled by Reuters and higher than the 7.6% in February.
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It happens in the whole world due to the pandemic and the Ukrainian war.
MOST, James? Have you actually read the comments flooding social media which sites such as this have been printing for the last two years....? You can't have been reading even half! But if you spend your time continuously doing nothing but writing every nonsensical, Inane idea you can muster, by the law of averages even a tiny number of them should come true!
If I was a conspiracy theorists, you would think that after the last pointless 2 years, and now this pointless war. All the struggle created unnecessarily to society. It looks like there trying to crash the global economy on purpose to bring in the Great Reset? But what do I know? I'm just a silly conspiracy theorists. But haven't all but most of those conspiracies come true and are now fact???? Hmmm!! Stay under the carpet deniers. It's safer for now.