Spain's right-leaning government hailed a rare glimmer of economic hope Thursday when figures showed the jobless queue shrank in December, but unemployment was still up dramatically over the year.

Millions of jobs have been destroyed in Spain since a property market crash and a global financial crisis rocked the economy in 2008.

Spain's King Juan Carlos has seen his popularity plunge in the past year, a poll showed Thursday, after scandals over elephant-hunting and a corruption probe implicating his family.

Only half of the 1,000 people polled expressed a good judgment of his reign, compared with three quarters a year ago, said the survey by Sigma Dos for El Mundo newspaper.

Spanish consumer prices rose by 3.0 percent over the year to December as a sales tax rise hit shoppers in the pocket, provisional figures showed Wednesday.

The inflation rate was unchanged from November, said a report by the National Statistics Institute, which gave no breakdown of prices in the month.

Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday he hoped the eurozone's fourth economy would see a return to job creation in the last quarter of 2013.

"I think 2013 will be better than 2012," de Guindos said on Cadena Ser radio.

Spain defied the markets by averting a sovereign bailout this year but high interest rates could yet force Madrid to its knees as the nation confronts a 207-billion-euro ($274 billion) financing headache in 2013.

The eurozone's fourth-biggest economy has skirted a rescue so far even after slipping into a recession in mid-2011 that has sent the unemployment rate soaring to 25 percent, the highest in Spain's modern history.

Spain's prime minister says the country's economy faces a tough year ahead as it grapples with recession, a deep financial crisis and 25 percent unemployment.

In his end-of-year assessment Friday, Mariano Rajoy said the country's crisis had been worse than anticipated, warning that the first half of 2013 will be "very hard" with any recovery not expected until the latter part of the year.

Europe's main stock markets rose Thursday following the festive break and a rally in Tokyo, as traders focused on whether the United States would avert the 2013 "fiscal cliff" of sharp tax hikes and spending cuts.

In afternoon deals, London's FTSE 100 index of top companies was up 0.30 percent at 5,972.17 points compared with the close on Monday, its previous trading session.

Spain revealed Wednesday an ocean of red ink in its bailed-out Bankia group at the heart of the nation's banking crisis.

The lender Bankia had a negative value of 4.148 billion euros ($5.5 billion) and its parent group BFA 10.444 billion euros, the state-backed Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, or FROB, said in a statement.

Spanish police on Wednesday said it had busted a major drug trafficking ring, seizing more than 11 tonnes of hashish destined for Europe and arresting 35 people.

"The dismantled organisation controlled the entire chain of trafficking, from production to packing, as well as transport to Spain, storage, and distribution throughout Europe, especially in France, Belgium, England and the Netherlands," police said in a statement.

The leader of Spain's Catalonia region, Artur Mas, embarked on a new four-year term Monday, vowing to pursue a promised referendum on nationhood with an "iron will".

In his inauguration speech to Catalan political parties and Spanish Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro, he sought "explicit recognition of the right of Catalonia, like any other people of the world, to self-determination".