People shout in a parking lot of the Madrid transport bus company during a national strike in Madrid on Thursday. Unions have called a national strike to protest the labor reforms, which weaken industry-wide work contracts and make it cheaper to lay off workers. [Pedro Armestre / Agence France-Presse]

Spanish workers slowed public transport to a crawl and disrupted factories on Thursday in a protest over Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's sweeping reforms a day before a new round of budget cuts.

Police barricaded parliament and other public buildings, and arrested 58 people, many of whom were trying to stop workers crossing picket lines to get to their jobs.

A handful of scuffles broke out, flights were grounded and groups of union members waving red flags gathered in Madrid.

Spaniards have been tolerant of Rajoy's efforts to reform the labor market and meet strict Europe-imposed deficit goals to make sure it does not face a Greek-style debt crisis and in many neighborhoods it was business as usual.

But the strike, the first since September 2010, shows that patience with the three-month-old government may be running out.

"This is the largest cut of (workers') rights since anyone can remember. There has to be a better way to get out of this crisis," UGT union member Marta Lois, 40, said on Madrid's main street Gran Via.

Unions said there was 85 percent turnout for the general strike while the center-right government said the work day was proceeding normally.

Transport employees provided a previously agreed basic level of service, meaning one in four buses and about a third of underground and local trains were expected to run but only 10 percent of domestic flights and 20 percent of European flights.

Police presence was particularly heavy around parliament where lawmakers were due to debate measures to help heavily indebted local and regional governments pay money owed to suppliers.

Spain is now tipping into its second recession since the end of 2009, and some observers expect at least another million people to join already swollen unemployment lines.

The jobless rate is the highest in the European Union at 23 percent and almost half of under 25-year-olds are out of work.

Polls had predicted only 30 percent of workers would join Thursday's one-day strike against labor reform, but a surprise electoral setback for the ruling People's Party, at two regional elections on Sunday may spur wider participation.

"Sunday's election results are a sign that the population won't accept these kinds of reforms ... and could mark the start of a new cycle with more active opposition to policies than we've seen in recent months and year," economics professor at Spain's Santiago de Compostela University Xavier Vence said.

Reuters