“We are going to defend the euro, we think that we have to give more stability to our currency, and we will do whatever is necessary to reach this objective,” she said on her arrival for crunch talks between the 27 EU finance ministers in Brussels.

She added that Madrid — labouring under debts exacerbated by the bloc’s highest rate of unemployment and, like Greece and Portugal, facing a squeeze on international money markets — would not call on a planned new common bailout fund.

“Spain does not envisage calling on this fund,” she said of plans to set aside scores of billions of euros for troubled eurozone nations.