The Spanish stock market index Ibex-35 extended at Friday's opening the previous day's advance and surpassed the resistance level of 9,600 points, on the back of favorable indicators from the Chinese economy and the hope that the European Central Bank has put an end to its current cycle of interest rate hikes.

The European Central Bank on Thursday raised interest rates for the tenth consecutive time to a record 4% to counter persistent inflation, but signaled it is likely to end more than a year of tightening monetary policy.

Still, analysts at brokerage Renta 4 warn that monetary tightening could last longer than the market wants.

"The most relevant thing, beyond whether there will be any additional rate hikes, is that the ECB is committing that interest rates will remain at restrictive levels for a sufficient period of time to bring inflation back to the 2% target," they say.

In any case, the markets have already begun to speculate on when it will be time to cut interest rates, a time that they now place in the second half of 2024, always depending on the state of the European economy.

With no major macroeconomic events on Friday, the markets' attention will now turn to the Federal Reserve, which on Wednesday could also emulate the message sent by its European counterpart.

In addition to the good monetary news, new figures for the Chinese economy pointed to the positive effect of state aid measures, despite the fragile state of its real estate sector.

With this boost, the Ibex-35 could close the week with an accumulated increase of 2.66% in the last five days - the biggest weekly advance since the end of June - and at Friday's opening, it was at its best level since the end of August.

At 07:06 GMT on Friday, Spain's selective Ibex-35 stock market index was up 60.50 points, 0.63%, to 9,609.50 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was up 0.83%.

In the banking sector, Santander rose 0.96%, BBVA gained 0.47%, Caixabank advanced 0.33%, Sabadell gained 0.61%, Bankinter gained 0.10%, and Unicaja Banco rose 0.20%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica gained 0.74%, Inditex advanced 0.42%, Iberdrola gained 0.77%, Cellnex gained 0.89%, and the oil company Repsol rose 0.39%.

(Information by Tomás Cobos; edited by Flora Gómez)