Spain's coronavirus cases today climbed by more than 9,000 - nearly three weeks after the country introduced drastic lockdown measures to curb the spread.
The number of cases rose to 94,417 on Tuesday from 85,195 on Monday, the country's health ministry said.
Meanwhile, the death toll rose overnight by 849 to 8,189, the highest figure since the epidemic started.
The figures will be deeply worrying for Spanish authorities who would have hoped strict lockdown measures would have eased the outbreak by now.
In Italy, the number of daily infections has steadily dropped over the last week after similar lockdown measures were implemented, now standing at only 4,000.
Earlier this month, a British tourist died in Lanzarote having caught the coronavirus.
The OAP, who has not been named, was the second Covid-19 fatality on the Spanish island.
Regional health officials said the man was more than 70-years-old and confirmed he was a tourist, but offered no more details about his identity.
A spokesman for the regional health authority said: “I can confirm a British tourist on the island has died after testing positive for coronavirus.
“He had underlying health issues.”
Madrid held a minute of silence for the victims of the disease, and Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings was played from loudspeakers while the nation's flag was flown at half-mast.
The government said it was imposing caps on funeral prices, following reports that undertakers were taking advantage of increased demand.
The government gave businesses an extra 24 hours to wind down operations, with full closure of non-essential activity to start on Tuesday.
Spain unveiled earlier this month a €200bn (£177bn) economic aid package to help furloughed workers get benefits and businesses draw state-backed credit lines.
Spain overtook China in the number of those infected with coronavirus on Monday.
Business leaders criticised Spain's actions over the weekend to ban all non-essential work until mid-April and to extend for another two weeks a nationwide shutdown that has paralysed industries like car manufacturing and tourism.
"If you stop the country, we'll have a huge social problem within five months," Antonio Garamendi, president of Spain's business association, said in a television interview.
In further measures to soften the blow of the outbreak, the government is likely to approve on Tuesday a moratorium on rent for vulnerable groups like unemployed people with dependents, government sources said.
However, in a show of how some parts of the economy such as grocery retail are booming as people hunker down at home, supermarket chain Dia said on Monday it had hired 1,000 people to deal with increased demand in online orders.
