One of the most wanted members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA was arrested Monday in southwestern France, officials said. 

Sabin Mendizabal Plazaola, 34, who had been on the run for six years, was held in Saint-Palais in the foothills of the Pyrenees on an international arrest warrant for allegedly injuring a Spanish police officer who had been chasing him, Madrid said.

Spain's government is fighting off a two-pronged assault from new protest parties after it collapsed in a key regional election ahead of this year's national polls.

The vote in the poor southern Andalusia region was a key test for surging left-wing party Podemos, which hopes to emulate its Greek ally Syriza and win power nationally by campaigning against crisis austerity measures.

A controversial sculpture of former king Juan Carlos of Spain being sodomised has finally gone on display in Barcelona.

The decision to show the "very sensitive" papier mache sculpture by Austrian artist Ines Doujak comes after the director of Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art reversed an earlier ruling.

Spain's anti-austerity Podemos party on Sunday took third place in a regional vote in Andalusia seen as a crucial test for the political newcomer ahead of the country's most unpredictable general election in decades.

With 99.95 percent of the ballots counted, Podemos had won 14.8 percent of the vote in the southern region according to the regional government, not enough to challenge the country's two traditional political heavyweights.

Polls opened on Sunday in Andalusia, one of the poorest parts of Spain, in a regional vote that will be a key test of anti-austerity party Podemos ahead of the country's most unpredictable general election in decades.

"Everything is ready to fill the ballot boxes with mauve!" the left-wing Podemos, said on its Twitter account, referring to the party colour, as voting got underway.

A regional vote on Sunday in Andalusia, one of the poorest parts of Spain, will be a key test ahead of the country's most unpredictable general election in decades.

Recent years of recession and corruption scandals make the southern region of farms and tourist beaches a prime testing ground for Spain's new political dynamic, transformed by the crisis and ensuing austerity measures.

Spanish authorities arrested eight suspected members of a jihadist network Friday who allegedly called for terrorist attacks in Spain and tried to recruit for the Islamic State group.

In raids in the vicinity of Madrid and Barcelona, agents took into custody suspects who "called for the commission of terrorist acts in Spain inspired by techniques used in other countries," an interior ministry statement said.

A Spanish judge on Thursday remanded two suspected jihadists in custody on terrorism charges following their arrest in Spain's north African territory of Ceuta, a judicial source said.

Judge Pablo Ruz at the National Court in Madrid ordered the two to be detained pending trial on charges of belonging to a terrorist group and illegal arms possession, the source said.

U.N. Security Council member Spain called Thursday for a deal to end unrest in Libya within weeks and said a U.N. resolution would be needed to approve any NATO intervention there.

Concerned by violence and the rise of Islamist groups in Libya, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo appeared in Madrid alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to tout security cooperation in the region.

The Spanish Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a paternity suit against the former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, by a Belgian woman claiming to be his daughter, a judicial source said.

Ingrid Sartiau claims that Juan Carlos fathered her in the mid-1960s, in the first lawsuit filed against the 77-year-old since he lost his total immunity when he abdicated last June.