Spanish security forces launched pre-dawn raids Friday to break up a jihadist cell in Spain's north African territory of Melilla, arresting six suspects, the government said.

In a 4am (02:00 GMT) operation, officers dismantled an international network that was recruiting and sending out jihadists to join "terrorist organizations" based in Mali and Libya, the Spanish interior ministry said in a statement.

A court in Spain on Thursday convicted a Saudi man dubbed "al-Qaida's librarian" of the charge of membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced his to eight years in jail.

The National Court, the top criminal court in the country, also ordered that Mudhar Hussein Almalki be put on probation for nine years after his release from jail.

An Argentine judge heard testimony in Spain on Thursday from two women in their 90s who say their family members were tortured and killed during General Francisco Franco's right-wing dictatorship.

Their testimony forms part of a probe into possible crimes against humanity by the dictatorship which Argentine Judge Maria Servini de Cubria opened in 2010 under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

A Ryanair plane with 148 passengers on board made an emergency landing Thursday on the Spanish tourist island of Mallorca due to a false fire alert, airport authorities said.

A fire warning in the undercarriage came on shortly after the plane took off from Palma de Mallorca airport bound for Memmingen in Germany early Thursday morning, Spain's aviation authority AENA said.

Thirty people were arrested and 14 others hurt when police clashed with stone-throwing youths in a third night of riots sparked by a squat eviction in Barcelona, officials said Thursday.

Hooded youths burned bins, broke windows and hurled bottles and stones when police charged them after some 2,000 people gathered for a protest on Wednesday night, an Agence France Presse reporter saw.

Spain reported Thursday the fastest economic growth since a devastating 2008 property crash, even as 5.9 million people searched in vain for work with the unemployment rate stuck at 26 percent.

Boosted by domestic demand, Spanish gross domestic product grew at a quarterly pace of 0.4 percent in the first three months of 2014, the highest rate in six years, the National Statistics Institute said.

Spanish police charged at youths who attacked their vans and lit fires in a second night of riots over the demolition of a popular Barcelona squat, officials said Wednesday.

Police have arrested eight people in clashes that erupted after squatters were cleared from "Can Vies", a public building occupied for 17 years by left-wing radicals in the northeastern city.

More than 400 migrants stormed across a towering, triple-layer border fence from Morocco into the tiny Spanish territory of Melilla on Wednesday, one of the biggest crossings in nearly a decade, officials said.

About 1,000 sub-Saharans joined in the dawn attempt to enter Melilla, a tempting target for Africans desperate to reach Europe as it forms one of the only land crossings along with another Spanish territory, Ceuta, to the west.

Spanish police said Tuesday they had smashed a ring that used a fleet of inflatable motorboats to smuggle nearly three tonnes of hashish into Spain from Morocco.

The group, based in the town of Los Barrios in southwestern Andalusia, hid the boats inside homes bordering a coastal river that flows into the Atlantic, police said in a statement.

Police clashed with protesters who burned bins and vehicles in Barcelona on Monday as anger boiled over at the eviction of activists from a well-known squat.

Officers made several arrests as hooded youths smashed windows and hurled stones at police and journalists in the streets of the northeastern city.