Spain's government, seeking to cut its deficit amidst a double-dip recession, is to unveil new measures Friday aimed at reviving the economy, a day after registering record unemployment.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government is to unveil its latest package of economic reforms at 2:00 pm (1200 GMT), a day after violent protests over news that unemployment in the eurozone's fourth-largest economy had surged past 27 percent in the first quarter of 2013 -- a new record.

Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum opens Friday a major retrospective of works by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali which explores how his experiments with painting, cinema and advertising have influenced art.

The exhibition features more than 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, writings and television and film clips from the 1920s to the 1980s, including 30 works never before shown in Spain.

Spain's unemployment rate surged past 27 percent to a new record in the first quarter of 2013, official data showed Thursday as a deep recession ravaged the eurozone's fourth-largest economy.

A record unemployment number was also expected to emerge later Thursday in France, the eurozone's second-biggest economy.

Police arrested four members of anarchist groups suspected of plotting to set fire to a bank ahead of a demonstration planned Thursday in Madrid against the economic crisis, the government said.

"The detentions took place at dawn when a violent cell composed of four people, all of them members of anarchist groups, were preparing to set fire to a bank," an interior ministry statement said.

Spain backs the formation of a national unity government in Syria as a way out of the country's two-year conflict, its foreign minister said after talks in Beirut on Wednesday.

"The regime of (Syrian President) Bashar Assad has support, more or less, among the population, the Russians and the Iranians, and (can rely) on an army that functions," Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said at a meeting with his Lebanese counterpart Adnan Mansour in Beirut.

Spanish police on Tuesday arrested two "suspected terrorists" believed to be linked to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Spain's interior ministry said.

Officers "today detained two suspected terrorists of al-Qaida in Murcia and Zaragoza," with help from the French and Moroccan police, it said.

Spain's struggling economy logged a 0.5 percent contraction in the first quarter of 2013 due to falling internal demand, the central bank said on Tuesday.

"During the first quarter of 2013, the Spanish economy continued its path of contraction, but at a slower pace compared to the end of last year," the Bank of Spain said in its monthly economic bulletin for April.

Spain, the main gateway into Europe for cocaine and hashish, has stepped up the fight against drug trafficking by rings which are shifting their tactics to keep their access to the lucrative European market.

"We are winning battles but it will be difficult to win the war," said the head of the anti-cocaine squad of the anti-drugs unit of Spain's national police force, Jose Antonio Rodriguez.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margolo is due to arrive in Beirut on Tuesday eve for talks with senior Lebanese officials.

The FM will arrive in Lebanon via from Cyprus on the first stop of his regional tour, accompanied by a diplomatic delegation.

Spain's population fell last year the first time since annual records began in 1998 as immigrants left in droves because of a steep recession that has tipped one in four people in the country out of work, official data showed Monday.

There were 47.1 million residents in Spain as of the first of January, 205,788 fewer than during the same time last year, according to provisional figures from the national statistics institute.