Chasing a record 340, England seemed well set as Jonathan Trott (112) and Matt Prior took them to 233-4.
But Prior's dismissal to Rangana Herath (6-97) for 41 sparked the latest collapse of what, for Andrew Strauss's side, has been a miserable winter.
England, the world's top Test side, have now lost four successive matches.
And just as in their 3-0 series defeat by Pakistan earlier in 2012, the failure of the batting order was again to blame, with players unwilling to play patiently on a pitch that seemed to hold few demons.
Trott at least became the first England player this winter to reach three figures, but elsewhere there were injudicious shots as players gifted Sri Lanka - and Herath in particular - their wicket.
However, Trott's patient innings suggested that the total could have been attainable despite England's previous highest chase being 332 against Australia in 1928.
After a gutsy stand between Kevin Pietersen and Trott had kept England in the game on the third evening, the tourists resumed on 111-2, with Graeme Swann suggesting that they would pull off a famous victory.
But having added only one to his overnight 29, Pietersen played a poor shot to off-spinner Suraj Randiv, coming down the pitch and flicking straight to mid-wicket.
There was a more disciplined and watchful mindset from Trott and Ian Bell, the reverse sweep that took Trott past 50 being a rare exception.
Trott survived a scare on 62 when he offered a sharp return chance to Herath, who could not hold on to a one-handed catch to his left.
The curse of the premeditated sweep then struck England as Bell lunged at a straight ball from Herath and was caught on the half volley to a ball that a review suggested would have clipped off stump.
His Warwickshire team-mate carried on defiantly until lunch and, after the interval, continued to grind down Sri Lanka's attack, supported by an unusually restrained Prior.
When Trott brought up his hundred, England were sensing victory, but Prior then tried to up the ante and lost his wicket when a pull off Herath thudded into short leg's stomach, the catch taken on the rebound.
Cool heads were needed as the tension mounted, but two wickets in quick succession suddenly put Sri Lanka back in the ascendancy.
Debutant Samit Patel failed for the second time in the match, hitting Herath to cover, and Trott's heroic effort was finally ended when he nudged Randiv to leg-slip.
England, who lost their final five wickets for 12 runs, required 84 with three wickets remaining and it proved well beyond them.
They quickly subsided with Graeme Swann, James Anderson and Monty Panesar all offering minimal resistance as Randiv and Herath ripped through tail, Sri Lanka needing only seven balls after tea to take the final two wickets.

Europe's sophisticated ATV space freighter has docked with the International Space Station (ISS).
The unmanned robotic craft attached itself to the Zvezda module on the rear of the platform at 22:31 GMT.
The ship is delivering new supplies of fuel, food, water, air and equipment to the ISS's astronauts.
ATV is totally automatic and used its own computerised systems and sensors to find the station in orbit and make the connection.
At 20 tonnes, the freighter is the biggest ship servicing the station now that the US shuttles have been retired.
Mission managers, based in Toulouse, France, oversaw the final manoeuvres but had no need to intervene.
Astronauts Andre Kuipers and Oleg Kononenko were inside Zvezda when the vehicle made its final approach. They too stood ready to order the truck to a safe distance if any anomalous behaviour was observed, but the docking proceeded extremely smoothly.
In fact, the contact, which occurred over the American Samoas in the Pacific, was so gentle the ISS crew reported they hardly felt it.
The station's astronauts will need to scrub the air inside the ship before entering.
Once given the all clear, the six station residents can start to move the freighter's supplies across into the main body of the 390km-high (242 mile) orbiting post.
This ATV is the third such craft to be sent to the station by the European Space Agency (Esa), and has been dubbed Edoardo Amaldi in honour of the 20th Century Italian physicist who co-discovered slow neutrons, an essential step to nuclear power.
The two previous vehicles flew in 2008 and 2011.
The trucks are part of the barter arrangement that Esa has with its international partners on the ISS project.
Instead of handing over cash to cover station running costs, Europe has taken on the major responsibility of platform logistics.
In return, it gets residency rights for its astronauts - one individual to spend six months in orbit, every couple of years.
Dutchman Kuipers is the current beneficiary of that trade-in-kind.
The total cargo mass of ATV-Edoardo Amaldi - if you add in the fuel the ship uses for its in-orbit manoeuvres - is just over 6.5 tonnes.
This includes the largest ever load of dry cargo - 2.2 tonnes. Dry cargo covers everything from clothing and new toothbrushes to the Lego kits that astronauts use in the education demonstrations they beam to Earth.
ATV-Edoardo Amaldi should stay docked to the ISS until September. It will then be filled with station rubbish and sent into a destructive dive over the South Pacific.
European space ministers will meet later this year to decide on a successor to the ATV programme which is due to end after the fifth truck in the series visits the station in 2014.
One suggestion is that the technologies in the ship be used to push an American-developed manned capsule to destinations beyond the ISS.
Another idea is that those technologies be put into a new European multi-role space tug. This could perform tasks such as removing redundant satellites from orbit.

• Max cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes of dry and liquid supplies
• Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest
• Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide - the size of a large bus
• Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m
• Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters
• Capability: The ship finds and docks with the ISS autonomously
• No re-use: The vehicle is destroyed with ISS rubbish at mission end

His comments come two days after Fulham were denied a late penalty in the 1-0 defeat at Old Trafford.
"When United play at home they get some advantage that other teams don't get," Vieira told BBC Sport.
Man City later released a statement saying Vieira's comments had been taken out of context. 
"It's something the teams who are used to winning get all the time, so we need to win games so we have this advantage in the future."
With eight games left, City find themselves three points behind United, but Vieira - who took up a post as football development executive at Eastlands after retiring from playing - believes they would be worthy champions.
Speaking on behalf of Football Against Hunger at the Soccerex business forum in Manchester, Vieira said: "This is our moment.
"Since the start of the season we've been the best team and played the best football. I believe the club deserves it."
"When you are first you have the advantage, they are favourites," he said.
Vieira recently said that United's decision to bring Paul Scholes out of retirement was a sign of weakness.
In response, Sir Alex Ferguson accused City of an act of desperation when allowing Carlos Tevez to play despite going on strike.
Vieira said: "We're glad Carlos is back. The quality of these kind of players will be really important at this stage of the season.
"The issue was between him and the club. The players were really pleased to see him back.
"It's important not to lose focus, so many things can happen.
"People try to build this fire between the clubs. The heat is going to get more and more."

Under the programme residents in the city are allowed to invest privately overseas and set up loan firms.
It comes after the government's tight monetary policy has made it harder for companies in Wenzhou to get funds.
If successful the Wenzhou package could be introduced in other parts of China, the State Council said.
"Owners fled" The cash crunch lead to dozens of cases of bankruptcy in the city.
"In recent years, some of the small and medium-sized companies ran out of capital and some business owners fled," the State Council said in a statement on Wednesday.
Wenzhou, in the south-eastern Zhejiang province, is a major manufacturing centre for eye glasses and lighters, and most of them are made by small businesses.
The proposed loan companies would help small manufacturers overcome a reluctance from big state-owned banks to lend to them because of the higher credit risks.
They prefer lending to the large state-owned companies.
The decision was called a "milestone" by Wang Jianhui, chief economist with Southwest Securities, as it showed the government was willing to lead "the reforms that are urgently needed".
"Investment Opportunities" Last year, the local government of Wenzhou had proposed to give its residents more freedom to invest overseas.
However, the plan was dropped because it did not get the federal government's support.
With the latest approval, though, residents will be able to invest in foreign investments which offer higher returns.
Still the State Council has not specified how much investment it would allow local investors.
"I see a lot of new investment opportunities coming up," said Zhu Jianfeng, general manager of Gold Emperor Group, a Wenzhou-based shoemaker.
"We will wait for the full details to emerge and then see what we can really do.

He was speaking at the opening of Google Campus, a new centre offering desk space and mentoring for technology companies.
Mr Osborne said Campus was part of a wider effort to "create the next generation of British technologies".
Google's Eze Vidra described the opening as a "transformational moment for the UK start-up community".
Campus is situated in the Old Street area of east London, an area dubbed the Silicon Roundabout.
The new building incorporates existing co-working space TechHub, which has now moved out of its original premises.
On the building's sixth floor is SeedCamp, an early stage investment programme which puts cash into about 20 fledgling technology companies a year.
Partnership Mr Osborne said the work between Google and the government's Tech City initiative was the first of several partnerships required to give the sector sufficient support.
"The government doesn't believe you can click your fingers and create a technology cluster. Wherever possible, our approach is to go with the grain of what's already happening."
He said since the Tech City initiative was launched in 2010, the number of technology firms in the area had risen from 200 to 700 - although this high number is often disputed by those within the community.
Further plans to bring research and development companies to the area would mean the UK remained at the "very cutting edge of innovation", the chancellor said.
"We want the UK to become the hub for technology in Europe as a whole.
"This is the path we need to take to create new jobs, new growth, and new prosperity in every corner of this country."

The "encyclopaedia" details how hundreds of different cancer cells respond to anti-cancer agents.
UK, US and European researchers say the data, published in Nature, is a step towards tailoring cancer medicine to a patient's genetic profile.
A cancer charity said the work would help in testing new cancer drugs.
Cancer cells grown in the laboratory are an essential tool in cancer research.
Hundreds of different cell lines exist, allowing scientists to study the effect of new cancer drugs on the human
The UK team, working with colleagues in the US, Paris and Switzerland, screened more than 600 cancer cell lines with 130 drugs, identifying genetic signatures linked with drug sensitivity.
Already clues are emerging that could be of benefit to patients, including the discovery that a rare bone cancer in children (Ewing's sarcoma) appears to be vulnerable to certain drugs.
Personalised medicine Dr Mathew Garnett of the Sanger Institute is lead researcher on one of the two papers published in the journal Nature.
"This is the largest study of its kind linking drug response with genetic markers. You need these very large studies to identify small subsets of cells that are sensitive to drugs."
Dr Levi Garraway of The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, US, is a senior member of the research team behind the second paper, which profiled 24 drugs across nearly 500 cell lines.
He told the BBC: "Developing this large cell-line resource with all the associated genetic details is another piece in the pie to get us to our goal of personalised cancer medicine.
"We're trying to get smarter about understanding what the right drug is using the genetic information in each tumour. This is a stepping stone along the way."
The next step is use the information to help decide on tailored treatments for cancer patients.
This would involve getting a genetic "fingerprint" of their tumour, which could be matched to information in the database.
Some cancer drugs are already available for individuals with a certain genetic makeup.
The best known is Herceptin, a breast cancer drug that works in patients with an overactive HER2 gene.
Professor Charles Swanton, based at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute, said the papers were "an invaluable resource" that provided "extremely useful intelligence" for cancer researchers.
He added: "This new resource will help speed up cancer research and may well begin to guide further developments in personalised cancer medicine."

Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa (the Brics group) are proposing an alternative to the World Bank.
Leaders of the five nations, which now account for nearly 28% of the global economy, discussed closer trade links.
In their joint Delhi Declaration, they also said dialogue was the only route to lasting solutions in Syria and Iran.
The summit was held amid Tibetan protests aimed at China's president.
Hu Jintao joined other Brics leaders for the fourth meeting of the bloc of emerging economies. On Wednesday, a Tibetan activist died in Delhi after setting himself on fire two days earlier in protest at Mr Hu's visit.
Brics nations' share of the global economy has risen fast in recent years and is expected to continue to grow. Correspondents say they are also growing in diplomatic clout.
Closer economic ties On Thursday, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and Jacob Zuma of South Africa joined Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr Hu for hand shakes and a group photograph at the start of the one-day meeting.
"The Brics countries have agreed to examine in greater detail a proposal to set up a South-South development bank, funded and managed by the Brics and other developing countries," Mr Singh later said.
The Delhi Declaration expressed concern over the current global economic situation, especially in the euro zone.
It said the Brics nations were ready to work with the international community to ensure that the world economy was taken forward, and Europe was given the necessary assistance so it could help itself.
The meeting also agreed to expand the capital base of the World Bank and other multilateral institutions to ensure global economic stability.
But, Mr Singh said that "institutions of global political and economic governance created more than six decades ago have not kept pace with the changing world" and that developing countries needed access to capital.
The five nations, in their closing statement, voiced concern about slow reforms and called on the International Monetary Fund to make its surveillance framework "more integrated and even-handed".
'Unjust policies' The countries also resolved "to promote greater interaction among the business communities of Brics nations and easier visa facilities for businessmen".
Mr Singh said the Brics group must speak with one voice on important issues such as reform of the UN Security Council.
President Hu said Brics nations should "enhance co-operation and intensify communication in international trade".
Brazil's Dilma Rousseff said the Brics had become "the most important engines of the world economy in the past few years. Together, we will be responsible for more than half of the foreseen growth for 2012, 56% according to the IMF".
She blamed the developed world for hindering other nations with "unjust" monetary policies.
Correspondents say the joint development bank is expected to be established along the lines of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, offering funding outside the current global financial system.
The Brics leaders also discussed the volatile situation in Syria and Iran and stressed the "vital importance that stability, peace and security of the Middle East and North Africa holds for the international community".
"We call for an immediate end to all violence and violations of human rights" in Syria, the declaration said adding that "the situation concerning Iran cannot be allowed to escalate into conflict, the disastrous consequences of which will be in no one's interest".
The Brics nations have radically different economies and political systems and have often struggled to find common ground in the past.
But, they have been looking at ways to increase their trade links and decrease dependency on Europe and the United States.

Sten Tolgfors "resigned at his own request", a spokesperson said.
Swedish public radio revealed the confidential plans for the country's Defence Research Agency to help Riyadh build weapons, including missiles and torpedos, in early March.
Sweden does not ban weapons exports to Saudi Arabia, but the secretive nature of the plans caused controversy.
Earlier this month Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt confirmed that an initial deal had been signed with the Saudis in 2005.
'Cover up' Mr Tolgfors defended the decision, saying the plans were in line with military cooperation deal between the two countries.
But he has come under increasing pressure to resign as some of the press and the left-wing opposition accused the government of a cover up.
Although the plant has not yet been built, Swedish radio says Project Simoom began under the aegis of the government in 2007, but was handed to a private company in 2009 when it was felt that the defence agency was "legally hindered" from carrying on with the project.
The company, named SSTI, was then apparently given an export permit to buy equipment for missiles, bombs and other weaponry.
The opposition Green Party is now calling for an investigation into the deal, saying Sweden should not support a "dictatorship" in Saudi Arabia.
Roberta Alenius, a spokeswoman for the prime minister, said Mr Reinfeldt would discuss the reason for his defence minister's resignation at a press conference later on Thursday.

Abdallah Zekri, of the Muslim Council of France, said Algeria had cited security as the reason for its refusal.
He told AFP news agency that Merah's family had asked him to organise the funeral within 24 hours.
Family members had been hoping to escort Merah's body to Algeria, where the family is originally from.
The family had planned to hold the funeral in the municipality of Souagui, about 80km (50 miles) south of the capital, Algiers.
Merah, 23, killed seven people, including three children, in south-western France before he was shot dead in a siege at his home last week.
Police have found an abandoned car near Toulouse with possible links to Merah and the attacks, French media say.
Scooter The car was discovered by residents late on Wednesday in St Papoul, a village near the town of Castelnaudary, the Midilibre regional daily reported.
The grey Renault Clio contained parts of a Yamaha Tmax scooter identified as the same type thought to have been used by Merah to travel to the scenes of the murders, reports say.
The car's owner has been identified as a man living in the same Toulouse block of flats as Merah, France 3 TV quoted a source close to the investigation as saying.
French newspapers say the discovery supports theories that Merah may have had an accomplice.
The killer's elder brother, Abdelkader Merah, is said to have told investigators that a third man was present with the pair when the scooter used in the attacks was stolen, Le Parisien newspaper reports.
Merah died in a police assault on his flat in Toulouse on 22 March after a 32-hour siege. He had killed three soldiers in two separate attacks before shooting dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school.
Merah, born in France of Algerian descent, is said to have told police he wanted to avenge Palestinian children and to attack the French army because of its foreign interventions.
His father, Mohamed Benalal Merah, has said he has hired an Algerian lawyer to sue French special police over his son's death.

The source, who did not want to be identified, said the allegations against Bo Xilai were "preposterous".
Mr Bo was sacked from his job in charge of the city of Chongqing after his police chief fled to a US consulate, causing major embarrassment to Beijing.
Since then, a steady stream of damaging stories about Mr Bo have emerged.
Earlier this week it emerged that the British government had asked the Chinese authorities to re-open an investigation into the death of UK businessman Neil Heywood, a close friend of Mr Bo.
Unconfirmed media reports suggest Mr Bo's police chief had information about Mr Heywood's death.
'Just preposterous' Bo Xilai was one of China's top politicians, tipped for even higher office when the Chinese Communist Party carries out a once-in-a-decade leadership change later this year.
Suave and sophisticated, he was popular in Chongqing where he was party secretary, the top job in the city.
He also appeared to have support in the higher echelons of the Communist Party. Many national leaders visited Chongqing after the 62-year-old took charge there in 2007.
But since his sacking that support has disappeared - and a series of accusations have been levelled against Mr Bo.
One suggested Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun fled to the US consulate because Mr Bo reacted angrily when told of an investigation into his family.
"That's just preposterous," the Bo family contact told the BBC.
He said the relationship between Mr Bo and Mr Wang was "normal" just days before the policeman fled. "He was pledging his allegiance," said the contact.
He added that members of Mr Bo's family had worked hard to avoid the appearance that they were benefiting from the politician's rise.
Bo Xilai's wife, Gu Kailai, apparently gave up her career as a high-flying lawyer a few years ago. "She shut down her law firm just when it was getting very big and exciting for her," said the source.
Mr Bo had also been accused of praising the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic period from 1966-1976 when normal life was turned upside down.
While in charge in Chongqing he launched a campaign to re-energise people's enthusiasm for China's communist past under Mao Zedong.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a thinly veiled attack on Mr Bo's project at a press conference just the day before he was sacked.
The family contact said: "Any suggestion that Bo Xilai wanted to go back to the Cultural Revolution period is wrong, given that he spent some of that time in jail."
The source wanted to counter the impression among many that Mr Bo was an ambitious politician who sought popularity to further his political goals.
He said Mr Bo acted only out of a "sense of duty".
"The problem with China's government is that it's strayed too far from the people. If you do things for people, others say you are being a populist," he added.
Major stir The source said Mr Bo had nothing to do with the death of Neil Heywood, the British businessman who died in Chongqing in November 2011.
There are rumours that Mr Wang, Bo Xilai's police chief, fled because he had details about a connection between Mr Bo's family and Mr Heywood.
It has emerged that Mr Wang first arranged a meeting at the UK consulate in Chongqing, but never turned up.
Mr Heywood, who worked as a consultant in China, was a friend of Bo Xilai, but the family contact denied there were any business dealings between the two. Police say the 41-year-old died of excessive alcohol consumption - friends say he drank only occasionally.
Bo Xilai has disappeared from public view since his sacking last month and it is unclear whether he is under investigation or still has his seat on the party's 25-member politburo.
But the damaging stories about him continue. Whatever the truth behind them, his downfall has caused a major stir within the Chinese political establishment.
The claims and counter claims suggest there is a major battle between political rivals ahead of the leadership changeover.

It is built from thousands of individual images acquired by two UK-developed telescopes operating in Hawaii and in Chile.
Archived data from the project, known as the Vista Data Flow System, will be mined by astronomers to make new discoveries about the local cosmos.
But more simply, it represents a fabulous portrait of the night sky.
"There are about one billion stars in there - this is more than has been in any other image produced by surveys," said Dr Nick Cross from the University of Edinburgh.
"When it was first produced, I played with it for hours; it's just stunning," he told BBC News.
Dr Cross has been presenting the new work to the UK National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) here in Manchester.
The image concentrates on the dense plane of the galaxy, which means it renders as a very long, very thin strip.
That makes it is virtually impossible to show in a meaningful way on this page.
Dr Cross and colleagues have though produced an online interactive tool that allows the user to zoom in to particular areas. Even then, these smaller fragments of sky will contain thousands of stars.
The project has been 10 years in the making. It combines data from the UKIDSS/GPS sky survey acquired by the UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii with the VVV survey data acquired by the Vista telescope in Chile.
These astronomical facilities view the sky at infrared wavelengths, enabling them to see past the dust in the Milky Way that would ordinarily obscure observations made at optical, or visible, wavelengths.
UKIRT is responsible for the right end of the image; Vista produced the left, including the more extensive block of coverage which traces the centre of the galaxy and its surrounding bulge of stars. (Black squares in the image are data gaps that are in the process of being filled).
Researchers at the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge processed and archived all the data that underpins the big picture, and have made it available to astronomers around the world for future study.
"There are many uses for this picture," said Dr Cross. "It will help us really understand the true nature of our galaxy, to see where everything is.
"Some researchers will use it to find star forming regions; there'll be lots of these along the plane of the galaxy.
"Finding globular clusters will be another use. These are groups of very old stars that formed right at the beginning of the galaxy. We can study their distribution in this image and that tells us something about how the Milky Way started off.
"And it will be particularly useful to study anything that is extended. Here you can look at things on the large scale, to understand how they are related to each other; to look at things that might be across multiple images in a catalogue.
"These are the big objects like clusters, and nebulae - the gas clouds where stars are forming."

In a blog post, Mr Bezos said the five engines were found using advanced sonar scanning some 14,000ft (4,300m) below the Atlantic Ocean's surface.
Mr Bezos, a billionaire bookseller and spaceflight enthusiast, said he was making plans to raise one or more.
Apollo 11 carried astronauts on the first Moon landing mission in 1969.
The F-1 engines were used on the giant Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo landing module out of the Earth's atmosphere and towards the Moon.
They burned for just a few minutes before separating from the second stage module and falling to Earth somewhere in the Atlantic.
Mr Bezos' announcement comes days after film director James Cameron succeeded in his own deep-sea expedition, reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on the planet.
Museum hopes Announcing the discovery on his Bezos Expeditions website, Mr Bezos described the F-1 as a "modern wonder" that boasted 32 million horsepower and burned 6,000lb (2,720kg) of rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second.
"I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration," he wrote, confirming that his team had located the engines but without hinting where they might be.
"We don't know yet what condition these engines might be in - they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they're made of tough stuff, so we'll see," Mr Bezos wrote.
His privately funded team was planning to raise one or more engines, he wrote.
He said he planned to ask Nasa - which still owns the rockets - for permission to display one in the Museum of Flight in his home city of Seattle.
Nasa said it looked forward to hearing more about the recovery, the Associated Press reports.
Other elements of the Apollo missions - including the Apollo 11 command module - are on display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
The attempt to raise the F-1 engines is not the first foray into space technology for Mr Bezos.
In 2000 he founded a private space flight firm, Blue Origin, which has received Nasa funding and is working on making orbital and sub-orbital spaceflight commercially available.

Road, rail and air transport were all affected with domestic and European flights cut to a fraction.
Unions claimed strong support at car factories and other industrial sites but Mariano Rajoy's conservative government played down the action.
It plans to unveil measures on Friday to save tens of billions of euros.
The strike is the government's first big challenge since taking office.
Scuffles broke out between protesters and police as workers from Spain's largest unions picketed at the capital's bus depot early on Thursday.
A total of 58 people were detained and nine were injured, the interior ministry said.
'Rights wiped away'
By agreement between the government and the unions, bus and rail services were kept to a minimum service while only one in 10 domestic, and one in five European, flights were able to operate.
One protester in Madrid, 31-year-old Angel Andrino, said he had been sacked a day after the labour reforms were approved in a decree last month.
Accompanied on a march by his parents and brother, he told the Associated Press news agency: "We are going through a really hard time, suffering.
"The rights that our parents and grandparents fought for are being wiped away without the public being consulted."
The UGT union said that participation in the strike was "massive" and that virtually all workers at Renault, Seat, Volkswagen and Ford car factories around Spain had honoured it during the shift.
Regional TV stations in Andalusia in the south, Catalonia in the north-east and Madrid were also off the air because of the strike.
With the EU's highest rate of unemployment, Spain is under pressure to reduce its budget deficit and bring its public finances under control.
"The question here is not whether the strike is honoured by many or few, but rather whether we get out of the crisis," the country's Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro said.
"That is what is at stake, and the government is not going to yield."
'Record reforms' The country's two biggest unions called the strike to demonstrate against new legislation which makes it easier and cheaper for companies to fire employees.
Protest marches are planned throughout the country during the evening.
The new legislation, approved in February, also reduces maximum severance pay to 33 days' salary for each year worked, compared with the current 45 days.
The government insists the reforms will create a more flexible system for businesses and workers, in a country with a stagnant economy that needs to start creating jobs.
Mr Rajoy, who took office in December, defended his measures on the grounds that they would eventually generate more jobs.
"No government has passed as many reforms in its first 100 days in office as this one," he said on Tuesday, speaking on a visit to South Korea.
"The biggest mistake would be to do nothing," the Spanish prime minister added.

Reports said the unnamed prisoners, hanged in separate prisons, had all been convicted of multiple murders.
Japan is one of the few advanced industrialised nations to retain the death penalty. It is usually reserved for multiple murders.
Though the majority support the death penalty, rights groups say Japan's death row is particularly harsh.
"Today, three executions were carried out," Justice Minister Toshio Ogawa said. "I have carried out my duty as a justice minister as stipulated by law."
There are currently more than 100 people on death row, including Shoko Asahara, the mastermind behind the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway. No executions were carried out in 2011.
Official figures in Japan as of 2011 put support for capital punishment at over 80%.
But rights groups like Amnesty International have called for it to be abolished, saying the condemned have few visits, little exercise and are forced to spend almost all of their time sitting down in their cells.
Sometimes held for decades, they are not warned in advance of when they will be put to death, meaning they fear every day is their last, the BBC's Roland Buerk reports.

One shooting killed five when gunmen fired on a vehicle going from Hazara Town on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Quetta, to the city centre.
The second attack took place when gunmen targeted a vehicle belonging to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO).
Five were injured in the attacks. No group has said it carried them out.
The victims from the first attack are believed to belong to the ethnic Hazara community who are Shia Muslims. The Shia minority has been the target of sectarian attacks in the Quetta area in recent years.
After the shooting members of the Hazara community held angry protests across the city, closing down markets and forcing traffic off the roads.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that sectarian attacks and attacks against non-governmental organisations are not uncommon in Balochistan, which is home to Islamist militants as well as nationalist insurgents.
The other incident took place in the Mastung area, some 50km (31 miles) south of Quetta, when gunmen attacked an UNFAO vehicle, killing two local employees.
An FAO official in Quetta told the BBC that those killed had been on their way to a UN-funded project in Mastung.
Some local religious groups are known to have launched attacks on non-governmental organisations in this region, saying NGO workers promote mixed gatherings and immorality, our correspondent says.

The UN-Arab League plan would see a UN-monitored end to fighting, troops pulled out of opposition areas and access for humanitarian services.
Syria agreed to the initiative on Tuesday but violence has continued.
A number of explosions were heard in central Baghdad as the summit was starting.
Two of the blasts occurred near the Iranian embassy, eyewitnesses said. There are unconfirmed reports that an explosion near the city's secure Green Zone was an IED (improvised explosive device).
There was no immediate official confirmation or explanation of the explosions.
Fewer than half the Arab League's 22 leaders have turned up for the summit, which is being held in such tight security that the venue was not initially disclosed to journalists.
While expectations are not high for the talks, the fact that they are being held in the Iraqi capital at all can be seen as a sign of progress for Iraq, our correspondent adds.
The arrival of the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, marked the first visit by a leader of that country since Saddam Hussein's invasion in 1990.
Scepticism Earlier, the head of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, urged Syria "to put commitments into immediate effect". "There is no time to waste," he said.
Washington has urged countries to maintain pressure on the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The US state department said it had "not seen the promises that Assad made implemented".
"It's incumbent on all of us to keep the pressure on Assad to meet the commitment that he's made, and that's our intention over the next few days," a spokesperson said.
Syria has said it will not address any initiative from the Arab League, from which it was suspended last year.
The opposition in Syria is sceptical about the terms of Mr Annan's plan, with some saying Mr Assad is merely stalling for time in order to continue his crackdown.
"We are not sure if it's political manoeuvring or a sincere act," said Louay Safi, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council.
"We have no trust in the current regime. ... We have to see that they have stopped killing civilians."
Opposition activists say at least 40 people have been killed since government troops overran the opposition-held town of Saraqeb in the north-west at the weekend.
Corpses littered the streets as homes were burned to the ground and shops pillaged and looted, they said in reports which could not be verified independently.
Security is extremely tight for the Baghdad summit and much of the city has been brought to a standstill for the summit, which is costing an estimated $500m (£314m) to stage.
The Iraqi government is hoping to re-establish itself in the Arab fold after years of violence and sectarian conflict, the BBC's Wyre Davies reports from Baghdad.
Little progress is expected either on the Syrian front or on wider tensions between Shia and Sunni factions in the region, he notes.
But if the summit, which is expected to last for barely a few hours, passes off without incident and if there are no insurgent attacks elsewhere in the country, it will be seen as a resounding success, our correspondent adds.
In another development, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he was asking fellow emerging economic powers to provide humanitarian aid to the Syrian people.
Speaking in the Indian capital Delhi, he said he had suggested the idea to fellow Brics states Brazil, India, China and South Africa.
In a closing statement, the five states said "lasting solutions" for both Syria and Iran could "only be found through dialogue".

Witnesses say machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades were heard from the heavily guarded district of al-Mezze, which hosts several security buildings.
Syrian TV said three "terrorists" and a security force member had been killed.
The UN estimates more than 8,000 people have died in the year-long uprising.
Meanwhile, a team of experts sent by special UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has now arrived in Syria to discuss ceasefire and monitoring plans, AFP news agency reports.
And in Moscow, the head of the Red Cross said that Russia had reacted "positively" to his call for a daily two-hour cessation of hostilities in Syria.
'Explosions' Al-Mezze has previously been the scene of large anti-government protests.
One resident told Reuters news agency there was "fighting near Hamada supermarket and the sound of explosions there and elsewhere in the neighbourhood".
Opposition activist Amer al-Sadeq told the BBC's World Today programme he had spoken to a contact in al-Mezze who reported four blasts within five minutes and then heavy gunfire.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights called the fighting "the most violent of its kind and closest to security centres in Damascus since the revolution began", adding that 18 government troops had been injured.
It said a cell of rebel fighters had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the home of a leading army officer, but this has not been confirmed.
The gunfire continued into Monday morning but is now over.
One al-Mezze resident told AFP: "We were very scared but now the roads are clear and stores are open."
State television said that in addition to the dead, several people on both sides were injured.
In January, the rebel Free Syria Army briefly seized several Damascus suburbs.
The latest incident follows bomb blasts in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo over the weekend.
The car bomb that exploded in Aleppo on Sunday killed at least two people and injured 30 others.
A day earlier, at least 27 people were reported to have been killed and 97 wounded in two explosions in the capital.
State TV described the blasts as "terrorist" attacks.
However, activists have accused the authorities of staging incidents to discredit opposition groups.
Reuters news agency on Monday reported residents of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor as saying that dozens of tanks had entered the city to try to dislodge Free Syrian Army rebels.
Pause plea On Monday, a team of experts arrived in Syria to press Mr Annan's proposals for a ceasefire and monitoring.
Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told AFP: "There are five people with expertise in peacekeeping and mediation. They will be staying for as long as they are making progress to reach agreement on practical steps to implement Mr Annan's proposals."
Meanwhile, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jakob Kellenberger, travelled to Moscow to meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Mr Lavrov gave "positive indications of support... for the initiative of a two-hour cessation of fighting on a daily basis", a Red Cross spokesman said.
The ICRC says the pause is needed for the evacuation of the wounded and to allow in food and medicine.
Mr Kellenberger added: "I would like to note with satisfaction and gratitude that Sergei Lavrov shares our concern about these problems."
Russia is a key ally of Syria and, along with China, has thwarted attempts to form a UN resolution condemning the repression.
President Assad is trying to quell an increasingly armed rebellion that sprang from a fierce crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protests a year ago.
He insists his troops are fighting "armed gangs" seeking to destabilise Syria.

Scientists told UK MPs this week that the possibility of a major methane release triggered by melting Arctic ice constitutes a "planetary emergency".
The Arctic could be sea-ice free each September within a few years.
Wave energy pioneer Stephen Salter has shown that pumping seawater sprays into the atmosphere could cool the planet.
The Edinburgh University academic has previously suggested whitening clouds using specially-built ships.
At a meeting in Westminster organised by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (Ameg), Prof Salter told MPs that the situation in the Arctic was so serious that ships might take too long.
"I don't think there's time to do ships for the Arctic now," he said.
"We'd need a bit of land, in clean air and the right distance north... where you can cool water flowing into the Arctic."
Towers would be constructed, simplified versions of what has been planned for ships.
In summer, seawater would be pumped up to the top using some kind of renewable energy, and out through the nozzles that are now being developed at Edinburgh University, which achieve incredibly fine droplet size.
In an idea first proposed by US physicist John Latham, the fine droplets of seawater provide nuclei around which water vapour can condense.
This makes the average droplet size in the clouds smaller, meaning they appear whiter and reflect more of the Sun's incoming energy back into space, cooling the Earth.
On melting ice The area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice each summer has declined significantly over the last few decades as air and sea temperatures have risen.
For each of the last four years, the September minimum has seen about two-thirds of the average cover for the years 1979-2000, which is used a baseline. The extent covered at other times of the year has also been shrinking.
What more concerns some scientists is the falling volume of ice.
Analysis from the University of Washington, in Seattle, using ice thickness data from submarines and satellites, suggests that Septembers could be ice-free within just a few years.
"In 2007, the water [off northern Siberia] warmed up to about 5C (41F) in summer, and this extends down to the sea bed, melting the offshore permafrost," said Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University.
Among the issues this raises is whether the ice-free conditions will quicken release of methane currently trapped in the sea bed, especially in the shallow waters along the northern coast of Siberia, Canada and Alaska.
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it does not last as long in the atmosphere.
Several teams of scientists trying to measure how much methane is actually being released have reported seeing vast bubbles coming up through the water - although analysing how much this matters is complicated by the absence of similar measurements from previous decades.
Nevertheless, Prof Wadhams told MPs, the release could be expected to get stronger over time.
"With 'business-as-usual' greenhouse gas emissions, we might have warming of 9-10C in the Arctic.
"That will cement in place the ice-free nature of the Arctic Ocean - it will release methane from offshore, and a lot of the methane on land as well."
This would - in turn - exacerbate warming, across the Arctic and the rest of the world.
Abrupt methane releases from frozen regions may have played a major role in two events, 55 and 251 million years ago, that extinguished much of the life then on Earth.
Meteorologist Lord (Julian) Hunt, who chaired the meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, clarified that an abrupt methane release from the current warming was not inevitable, describing that as "an issue for scientific debate".
But he also said that some in the scientific community had been reluctant to discuss the possibility.
"There is quite a lot of suppression and non-discussion of issues that are difficult, and one of those is in fact methane," he said, recalling a reluctance on the part of at least one senior scientists involved in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment to discuss the impact that a methane release might have.
Reluctant solutions The field of implementing technical climate fixes, or geo-engineering, is full of controversy, and even those involved in researching the issue see it as a last-ditch option, a lot less desirable than constraining greenhouse gas emissions.

Adding to the controversy is that some of the techniques proposed could do more harm than good.
The idea of putting dust particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, mimicking the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, would in fact be disastrous for the Arctic, said Prof Salter, with models showing it would increase temperatures at the pole by perhaps 10C.
And last year, the cloud-whitening idea was also criticised by scientists who calculated that using the wrong droplet size could lead to warming - though Prof Salter says this can be eliminated through experimentation.
He has not so far embarked on a full costing of the land-based towers, but suggests £200,000 as a ballpark figure.
Depending on the size and location, Prof Salter said that in the order of 100 towers would be needed to counteract Arctic warming.
However, no funding is currently on the table for cloud-whitening. A proposal to build a prototype ship for about £20m found no takers, and currently development work is limited to the lab.

State TV described the blasts as "terrorist" attacks. Preliminary reports suggested vehicles packed with explosives had been detonated, it said.
It said intelligence and police buildings were hit and the cause was not known.
Details of the reports cannot be independently verified.
Foreign journalists only have very restricted access to Syria.
Dozens of people have been killed in bomb attacks in Damascus and the second city Aleppo in recent months, which the government also blamed on terrorists.
The opposition has accused the authorities of staging some of those incidents.
Gruesome pictures State TV showed pictures of charred bodies, burned-out vehicles and bloodstains on the streets, as well as injured people being treated in hospital.
It described one body as being that of a terrorist.
It said buildings housing the criminal police and aviation intelligence had been targeted.
Opposition sources also said security buildings had been hit.
One activist told AFP news agency the first blast occurred at 07:30 local time (05:30 GMT), and was followed by a second more powerful explosion.
"All our windows and doors are blown out," local resident Majed Seibiyah, 29, told the Associated Press news agency.
"I was sleeping when I heard a sound like an earthquake. I didn't grasp what was happening until I heard screaming in the street."
Fresh anti-government protests were held on Friday in cities across Syria.
Clashes between rebel fighters and the army were reported in several other parts of the country.
President Assad insists his troops are fighting "armed gangs" seeking to destabilise Syria.
On Friday, UN and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan renewed calls for an end to fighting and for unimpeded humanitarian aid for Syria.
Speaking to UN Security Council members, he said he was sending a team to Damascus to discuss setting up a new international monitoring mission.
The international community remains divided on Syria, with Russia and China both blocking UN Security Council resolutions on Syria and aid groups from 27 countries urging them to condemn the government's use of violence.
But the two permanent members have backed Mr Annan's peace mission.

Mauritanian security officials said Abdullah al-Senussi was detained at Nouakchott airport.
Senussi, 63, was Gaddafi's brother-in-law, and has been described as one of his most trusted aides.
He fled Libya when Gaddafi was ousted and killed last year after an uprising and months of fighting.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest last year for crimes against humanity.
France said the arrest was carried out in a joint operation between French and Mauritanian authorities, and President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would request Senussi's extradition.
A French court convicted the former spy chief of involvement in a 1989 attack on a French plane that killed 170 people, and sentenced him to life in prison.
But Libyan authorities are also demanding his extradition.
Mauritania has not signed the ICC's statute, and it is unclear what the country intends to do with Senussi.
Uprising role Mauritanian security officials said he was arrested during the night as he arrived on a regular flight from the Moroccan city of Casablanca on a false Malian passport.
Libyan government spokesman Nasir al-Mani told state TV that Senussi was travelling with a young man thought to be his son when he was arrested.
"The Libyan government is making contacts to demand that Abdullah al-Senussi be handed over," said Mr Mani.
Analysts say he could provide the most detailed insights so far into the inner workings of the Gaddafi regime.
Senussi, nicknamed "the butcher", was one of the last significant members of the regime still at large.
He was indicted by the ICC along with Gaddafi and the leader's son Saif al-Islam on 27 June 2011.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was captured in November in southern Libya and has been held by former rebels ever since.
The ICC wants him tried in The Hague but the Libyan authorities say he will receive a fair trial at home.
Libyan, Arab and Western sources describe Senussi as a thuggish figure who would beat and abuse prisoners.
He is thought to have been responsible for purges of opponents within the regime in the 1980s and 90s, and for the deaths of 1,200 political prisoners at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison in 1996.
He kept a low public profile during last year's uprising, but reportedly played a key role in attempts to crush the revolt in the eastern city of Benghazi when it began last February.
There have been repeated reports of his death and capture which were later proved false.
Sources in the then opposition claimed he was killed in an attack by rebels in July in the Libyan capital Tripoli but later retracted the claim.
Officials in Niger said in October that he had fled through Niger into Mali, but a month later the new Libyan authorities said he had been arrested in the southern Libyan region of Sabha.
Further reports of his capture came in December but officials were unable to provide pictorial evidence.

The US president's scribblings, which include a man's torso and an eye, are among personal papers from 1981 of the former prime minister.
The Ottawa summit, which took place six months after Mr Reagan took office, saw the leaders' relationship progress to first-name terms - Ron and Margaret.
Mr Reagan was president for eight of Mrs Thatcher's 11 years in power.
The doodles, which were left on the table beside Mrs Thatcher and which she then filed in the flat at Number 10, have been released by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust.
The pair are first thought to have met in 1975 - four years before Mrs Thatcher became prime minister - when she was a junior minister in Edward Heath's government and Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California, was on a visit to Whitehall.
Remembering their first meeting, Mr Reagan said even then he had believed she would make a "magnificent prime minister".
After he took office in January 1981 - and in a sign of the close relationship to come - the prime minister was given of the honour of being the first foreign leader invited to the US by the Reagan administration.
She visited the US in February 1981.
'Close friends' The two leaders famously forged a close, though often tempestuous, relationship during their time in power.
Both political outsiders, they found common currency in shared right-wing ideals such as minimal government, strong defence and a free market. There was also a joint mission to defeat communism in the shape of the Soviet Union.
All of this and, in Margaret Thatcher's own words, a shared "determination to achieve them".
Political soul mates they might have been, but there were disagreements, most notably over the Falklands crisis in 1982 and then the US invasion of Grenada 18 months later.
In her eulogy at President Reagan's funeral in 2004, Lady Thatcher called him one of her "closest political and dearest personal friends", while in later life President Reagan told how "richly blessed" he had been for having known the "Iron Lady".

He had been sentenced in May 2011 by a German court to five years in prison, but was released pending an appeal.
He died at a home for the elderly.
The court said Demjanjuk, 91, was a guard at Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. He denied this, saying he was a prisoner of war and a victim too.
An estimated 250,000 people died in the gas chambers at Sobibor. Demjanjuk was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of the 28,060 people who were killed there while he was a guard.
Demjanjuk's family said during his trial that he was very ill.
He was also convicted on similar charges by a court in Israel in 1986, but the verdict was overturned when doubts emerged about his identity.
Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk grew up under Soviet rule.
He was a soldier in the Red Army in 1942 when he was captured by the Germans.
Prosecutors had argued he was recruited by the Germans to be an SS camp guard and that by working at a death camp he was a participant in the killings. No evidence was produced that he committed a specific crime.
It was the first time such a legal argument had been made in a German court.
Central to the prosecution's case was an SS identity card indicating Demjanjuk had been posted to Sobibor. The defence cast doubts on the authenticity of the card but court experts said it appeared genuine.

On Thursday, the adventurer leapt from a balloon-borne capsule 71,500ft (22km) above New Mexico, landing safely eight minutes later.
The dive was intended to test all his equipment before he tries to free-fall from 120,000ft later this year.
In doing so, he would better the mark of 102,800ft set by US Air Force Colonel Joe Kittinger in 1960.
Even just Thursday's jump puts Baumgartner in a select group as only Kittinger and Russian Eugene Andreev have descended from higher.
Baumgartner, who is famous for stunts such as jumping off the Petronas Towers, is seen in the special pressure suit he must wear to stay alive in the thin air and extreme cold of the stratosphere.
His Red Bull Stratos team estimates he reached 364mph (586km/h) during the descent, and was in free fall for three minutes and 43 seconds before opening his parachute. From capsule to ground, the entire jump lasted eight minutes and eight seconds.
The 42-year-old was quoted afterwards as saying that the cold was hard to handle.
"I could hardly move my hands. We're going to have to do some work on that aspect," he said.
The Austrian also said the extraordinary dimensions of the high atmosphere took some getting used to: "I wanted to open the parachute after descending for a while but I noticed that I was still at an altitude of 50,000ft."