Spain's economy contracted by 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2021, marked by a tightening of health restrictions and an unexpected cold snap, a provisional official estimate showed Friday. The National Statistics Institute (INE) now expects a strong rebound in activity with the Spanish economy, the eurozone's fourth largest, expected to grow by 6.5 percent in 2021 after a 10.8 percent contraction last year. Restrictions put in place since October to curb successive waves of the coronavirus have slowed the Spanish economy. Growth was flat in the final quarter of 2020, followed by the 0.5 percent contraction in the first three months of 2021, INE said. In year-on-year terms, GDP fell by 4.3% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year. In January and February, the economy was further hit by new restrictions to slow the resurgence of coronavirus cases after Christmas, which particularly affected the tourism and hospitality sectors. And Spain was also hit by a major snowstorm followed by a deep freeze that paralysed Madrid and other key areas of the country for 10 days in January. This weaker-than-expected first quarter led the government to lower its growth forecast for 2021 from 7.2 percent to 6.5 percent. This forecast is similar to that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which sees 6.4 percent growth for the Spanish economy in 2021, the strongest rise among developed countries after the United States. For 2022, the Spanish government sees growth of 7.0 percent. This economic turbulence has impacted Spain's fragile labour market, which ended 2020 with more than half a million additional unemployed, notably in the tourism and hospitality sectors where already precarious employment was swept away by the pandemic. At the end of March, the unemployment rate reached 15.9 percent of the working population, while 740,000 people were still on furlough contracts. emi/hmw/rl