After its worst session in almost two months the day before, the Spanish Ibex-35 index headed for its fourth consecutive downward session at Tuesday's opening, amid investors' misgivings about expectations of higher interest rates for longer than expected, coupled with pessimism about the Chinese real estate sector.

If on Monday morning it was the head of the European Central Bank (ECB) who insisted on the need to remain vigilant in the fight against inflation, overnight it was the turn of the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Fed), Neel Kashkari, who said that, given the surprising resilience of the US economy, the Fed will probably need to raise interest rates further and keep them high for some time.

This outlook boosted the dollar and pushed up government bond yields, on a day in which the only important macroeconomic references will come from the United States.

Analysts at Renta 4 highlight the interest of the Conference Board's September consumer confidence report, which "could continue to deteriorate in an increasingly complicated context for consumption (higher rates, depletion of accumulated savings, new upward pressure on energy prices, resumption of student loan repayments)".

The stock markets were also not helped by unfavorable news from China, after a subsidiary of the troubled developer China Evergrande Group defaulted on a domestic bond.

Against this backdrop, at 07:01 GMT on Tuesday, the selective Spanish stock market index Ibex-35 fell 60.30 points, or 0.64%, to 9,325.70 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks fell 0.53%.

In the banking sector, Santander lost 0.48%, BBVA gained 0.11%, Caixabank advanced 0.14%, Sabadell fell 0.32%, Bankinter gained 0.17%, and Unicaja Banco lost 0.05%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica fell 0.38%, Inditex dropped 0.63%, Iberdrola lost 1.02%, Cellnex fell 1.80%, and the oil company Repsol lost 0.74%.

(Information by Tomás Cobos; edited by Flora Gómez)