Spain's consumer prices rose 1.9% year-on-year in June, their slowest increase since March 2021, preliminary data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Thursday.

Spain is the first among the euro zone's large economies to have inflation fall below 2%, the European Central Bank's target, the Economy Ministry said in a statement. EU-harmonised 12-month inflation in Italy in June was 6.7%, while data for France and Germany are not available yet.

Spain's 12-month inflation was lower than the 3.2% increase in May but above the 1.7% expected by analysts polled by Reuters.

The drop in inflation in June was mainly due to fuel, electricity, food and non-alcoholic beverage prices increasing more slowly than in the same period a year ago, INE said.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile fresh food and energy prices and is closely-watched by the European Central Bank, was 5.9% year-on-year, down from 6.1% in the period through May, INE said.

Spain's European Union-harmonised 12-month inflation was 1.6%, down from 2.9% in May and slightly above the 1.5% average expectation from analysts polled by Reuters.

(Reporting by Joao Manuel Mauricio in Gdansk, editing by Inti Landauro and Christina Fincher)