9 May - Spain's Ibex-35 stock index fell slightly at the open on Tuesday, taking profits after two days of gains, on the back of fresh signs of the feared combination of inflation and recession in Europe.

On Monday, a senior European Central Bank official highlighted the persistent inflationary pressures in the Eurozone, which pose a difficult scenario for the institution, forced to tighten its monetary policy against inflation despite the growing economic weakening.

"To this environment of still high inflation is added the growing risks of technical recession in countries such as Germany, as evidenced by the industrial production data released yesterday (...), which increases the risk of downward revision of 1Q23 GDP (...), if we add it to the recent poor retail sales and exports data," said Renta 4 analysts.

In this sense, the market's attention will be focused on Wednesday's inflation data in the United States, where inflation could show a slight moderation (from 5.6% to 5.5% year-on-year), and on the avalanche of corporate results.

On Tuesday, the positive performance of the plasma derivatives group Grifols stood out, which advanced by 5.32% after improving its profitability margin forecast.

Overall, the selective Spanish stock market index Ibex-35 was down 8.40 points, or 0.09%, to 9,202.90 points at 07:05 GMT on Tuesday, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was down 0.14%.

In the banking sector, Santander was up 0.20%, BBVA was up 0.03%, Caixabank was down 1.66%, Sabadell was down 0.04%, Bankinter was down 0.23% and Unicaja Banco lost 0.27%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica gained 0.05%, Inditex lost 0.16%, Iberdrola dropped 0.68%, Cellnex fell 0.08% and the oil company Repsol lost 0.30%.

(Information by Tomás Cobos; edited by Darío Fernández)