Spain could become like Greece if the same austerity policies are imposed on the country, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said in an interview published Sunday.

"Spaniards need to look at their own economic and social situation and based on that evaluate what their country needs, independently of what happens in Greece or wherever," he told center-left daily El Pais.

Spanish public workers will get a one-percent pay rise next year, the government said Friday, trumpeting the country's economic recovery a few months ahead of a general election.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy nevertheless warned of the economic risk posed by "political uncertainty" over the Catalonia region's drive to break away from Spain.

Spain's economy expanded by 1 percent in the second quarter compared with the previous three-month period, its best rate since before the economic crisis began in 2007.

It was Spain's eight consecutive quarterly growth figure.

A hooded attacker opened fire Tuesday outside a hotel in downtown Barcelona near the Spanish city’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard, leaving two people injured, police said.

One person was struck by bullets while the other was hurt as they tried to flee the shooter, a regional police spokeswoman said.

Spain lashed out Tuesday at Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro for what it called "insulting and unacceptable" comments in which he branded conservative Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy a "hitman".

The Spanish foreign ministry had summoned Venezuela's ambassador in Madrid on Monday to complain after Maduro's comments in a televised address at the weekend.

Spanish King Felipe VI warned Catalonia on Thursday to obey the law in its drive for autonomy, as tension mounted over Catalan leaders' campaign to break away from Spain.

The head of state added his voice to warnings after Spain's conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, sharpened his tone against Catalan nationalists.

Spanish intelligence agents were working urgently Wednesday to track down three journalists from Spain, the latest foreigners to go missing while reporting in war-torn Syria.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said "no theory was ruled out" over what has happened to the three, missing for 10 days in a war zone where numerous foreigners have been kidnapped in the past.

Three Spanish freelance journalists have gone missing in Syria where they were reporting from the northwestern Aleppo region, the head of a Spanish press federation said on Tuesday.

Jose Manuel Lopez, Antonio Pampliega and Angel Sastre entered Syria via southern Turkey on July 10 "and there has been no news of them since July 12", said Elsa Gonzalez, president of the Federation of Press Associations of Spain.

One of Spain's "ghost airports" — expensive projects that were virtually unused — received just one bid in a bankruptcy auction after costing some 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) to build. The buyer's offer: 10,000 euros.

Ciudad Real's Central airport, about 235 kilometers (150 miles) south of Madrid, became a symbol of the country's wasteful spending during a construction boom that ended with the financial crisis of 2008, the year the airport opened. The operator of the airport went bankrupt in 2012 after it failed to draw enough traffic.

A blaze in a retirement home in northern Spain overnight left eight people dead and 11 hurt, the regional government said Sunday.

"There are eight dead and 11 hurt, including two seriously from smoke inhalation," a spokesman for the Aragon region government told Agence France Presse, adding that the cause of the fire was not yet known.