Spanish economic crisis deepens - FT.com Spain's unemployment rate rose to almost one in four, according to data released on Friday, amid a deepening economic crisis marked by another sovereign credit downgrade from Standard & Poor's. The number of Spaniards without jobs rose by almost 367,000 people in the first quarter of the year to reach 5.64m, or 24.4 per cent of the workforce, the National Statistics Institute said. On Thursday night, S&P, the credit rating agency, cut Spain's sovereign credit rating by two notches, predicting that a recession already under way this year would continue into 2013. S&P's comments, which hit European financial markets on Friday, said the Spanish state, already struggling to reduce its annual budget deficit and contain the rise in public sector debt, might need to provide further financial support for the banking sector. José Manuel García-Margallo, foreign minister, admitted in an interview with state radio that the unemployment figures were "terrible for everyone and terrible for the government." He said: "Spain is undergoing a crisis of enormous proportions." The government of Mariano Rajoy, centre-right prime minister, says it is determined to meet its EU-mandated targets for reducing the budget deficit, and says it has also embarked on reforms, including those to the labour market, that will have future benefits for employment and the economy as a whole. The economy ministry said of the S&P downgrade that the rating agency had taken into account only short-term factors, rather than the long-term benefit of reforms.