Spain to create 500,000 new jobs in 2017: minister

Spanish Minister for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, Luis de Guindos, said on Tuesday that the country will create around 500,000 new jobs in 2017, lowering the unemployment rate "clearly" below 17 percent.

Speaking at an event organized for the press, De Guindos was optimistic that the number of positions created this year would beat the 2016 record of 390,500 created jobs.

The record still left around 3.7 million Spaniards out of work: an unemployment rate of around 18.4 percent, but De Guindos assured the labor reforms implanted by the People's Party government were "giving their fruit," and that 2017 would end with an unemployment rate "well" below the government's own predications of 17.6 percent for the end of the year.

The minister highlighted that if this happened, it would mean a 10 percent reduction in unemployment from the maximum level of over 4.5 million people out of work in 2013.

Spain still faces the dual problems of low wages and the precarious nature of many new jobs. De Guindos insisted that the "data would start to improve" in that respect.