Spanish police said Monday they had arrested 80 suspected gang members accused of charging Chinese migrants 20,000 euros ($22,000) each to traffick them to Europe and North America.

The Chinese-run gang used houses in the Barcelona area as stopover bases, hiding the migrants there while they waited to be trafficked on to Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States.

One of the founders of Spain's anti-austerity Podemos party unexpectedly resigned on Thursday, plunging the poll-topping upstart into its first major crisis ahead of key elections this year.

Juan Carlos Monedero, 52, the party's number three and a former adviser to late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, said he was quitting over ideological differences.

Rights groups slammed an official visit to Spain on Thursday by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, saying he should be shunned for his authoritarian rule rather than courted for business deals.

Spain's King Felipe VI hosted the Egyptian leader to lunch at the royal palace after interior ministers from both nations signed an agreement to boost cooperation against illegal immigration, terrorism and organized crime.

Spain's conservative government on Wednesday rejected accusations of political interference in state television ahead of regional and parliamentary elections this year.

Opposition parties and workers at TVE accuse the station's news programs of favoring Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government and downplaying critics and news that could hurt the ruling Popular Party.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed that parliamentary polls, originally set for last month, will be held before the end of the year, in an interview published Wednesday.

"I give my word: they will be held before the end of the year," he told El Mundo newspaper in an interview published on the eve of his official visit to Spain.

Some 170 people were rescued and three lightly injured on Tuesday after a passenger ferry caught fire off Spain's Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, officials said.

The ferry operated by Trasmediterranea was traveling from Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands, to the eastern Spanish port of Valencia when the fire broke out, a company information officer said.

Spain recalled its ambassador to Caracas Wednesday after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused Madrid of "terrorism", as a row between the two countries intensified.

"Given the level of verbal irritation that I have seen from president Maduro, I have decided to recall our ambassador to Caracas for consultation," said Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo.

A young teenage student was in police custody on suspicion of killing a teacher and wounding four other people at his school in Barcelona on Monday.

"A teacher is dead," killed "by a bladed weapon," just after classes started at the Joan Fuster secondary school in Barcelona, a police spokesman said.

Grieving relatives joined political and religious leaders Friday at a sombre German memorial service for the victims of last month's Germanwings crash in the French Alps, blamed on a depressed co-pilot.

Flags flew at half-mast nationwide for the 150 dead during the ecumenical service at Cologne's historic cathedral attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck along with ministers from France and Spain.

Spain's foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned Venezuela's ambassador in Madrid to protest against comments made by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro describing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as "a racist."

"The government considers that these statements, insults and threats made by president Maduro against Spain are intolerable," the Spanish foreign ministry said in a statement.