The main Spanish stock market index showed a slight fall on Monday, although it maintained the psychological level of 9,000 points recently recovered after fourteen months below, in the run-up to a series of expected meetings of the major central banks.

"All the focus of the week will be on the Fed (Federal Reserve) meeting this Wednesday, February 1, with the possibility of seeing a 25 bp hike instead of the initial 50 basis points. On Thursday, February 2, it will be the turn of the ECB and the BoE (Bank of England), who has a tough 'homework' with inflation above double digits," said Diego Morin, analyst at IG.

In any case, market observers believe that, apart from possible surprises in the rate decisions, the focus will be mainly on the messages to be launched by monetary institutions on the future direction of borrowing costs.

During the day there will be special interest in Germany's GDP, which will be released at 09:00 GMT and could show a slowdown in growth of the leading European economy in the fourth quarter of 2022, without actually falling into a contraction.

In this context, the Ibex-35 opened with a slight reduction, "partly due to the adjustments that investors may make in their portfolios before the monthly close and the upcoming meetings of the central banks", according to Morín.

At 08:01 GMT on Monday, Spain's selective Ibex-35 stock market index was down 26.80 points, or 0.28%, to 9,033.40 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was down 0.57%.

In the banking sector, Santander lost 0.20%, BBVA fell 0.47%, Caixabank ceded 0.30%, Sabadell gained 0.09%, Bankinter lost 0.77%, and Unicaja Banco lost 0.72%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica gained 0.43%, Inditex dropped 0.49%, Iberdrola lost 0.05%, Cellnex gained 0.58%, and the oil company Repsol lost 1.44%, in a scenario of falling crude oil prices.

(Information by Tomás Cobos; edited by Darío Fernández)