Spanish police Monday arrested a former head of the armed Basque separatist group ETA who was behind its deadliest attack, just weeks after his early release from jail angered victims.

Officers detained Santiago Arrospide Sarasola, known as Santi Potros, in the town of Lasarte in the northern Basque Country, under a court order, the interior ministry said in a statement.

A top European rights official warned Spain Friday it risked destroying its asylum system if it passed a law authorizing police to immediately deport migrants from its north African territories.

Spain says the measure is needed to help its border guards secure the border of Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish cities fenced off from Morocco.

Catalan president Artur Mas has called a snap election in September to try to win a majority in favor of independence from Spain for the wealthy region as he tries to revive a secession movement that shows signs of cooling.

"All or nothing," wrote Catalan daily newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya on its front page on Thursday a day after Mas said early elections would be held on September 27 centered on the independence issue.

French Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibaly spent three days in Madrid before last week's Paris attacks, with Spanish police now investigating whether he had a support cell there, a newspaper said Thursday.

He was in Madrid between December 30 and January 2 with another person who has not yet been identified, Barcelona-based daily newspaper La Vanguardia reported.

Catalan president Artur Mas on Wednesday called a snap election on September 27 that will be centered on independence of the rich northeastern region from the rest of Spain.

"There will be elections after the summer... on September 27, 2015, to be precise" he told a news conference after reaching an agreement to hold the vote with the head of the opposition leftist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya party, Oriol Junqueras.

An anti-Islamic movement that is growing in Germany has opened a branch in Spain following last week's attacks in France, the group said Wednesday.

The Spanish wing of PEGIDA was launched on Twitter on January 8, the day after an attack by Islamist gunmen on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris that left 12 people dead including some of the country's best-loved cartoonists.

Spain's courts agreed on Wednesday to examine a paternity suit against former king Juan Carlos by a woman claiming to be his daughter, the latest scandal to hit the monarchy.

It is the first lawsuit to be allowed against Juan Carlos, 77, since he lost his total immunity when he abdicated last June.

Spain's conservative government and the main opposition Socialists meet Tuesday to agree on tighter security measures to fight Islamic extremism in the wake of France's terror attacks.

The ruling Popular Party on Friday asked the Socialists for a meeting on the issue following mass shootings at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and bloody hostage drama at a Jewish supermarket in a related incident.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo called for more international help for Gaza as he met Tuesday with families who lost their homes in last summer's war with Israel.

"The international community must act rapidly to rebuild Gaza," he told reporters at a U.N.-run school in Gaza City, one of a number of places hosting some 17,000 Gazans who were displaced during the war. 

Spain's government Monday promised new measures to fight hepatitis C, following protests by patients who complained authorities were denying them the latest drugs to treat the deadly liver disease.

A new committee will draw up a proposal within three weeks of examining the extent of the illness and clinical criteria, aiming to "include newly authorized drugs" in treatment plans, the health ministry said in a statement.