Spanish rescue services said they had picked up more than 100 African migrants from boats in the Atlantic and Mediterranean sea on Saturday, incidents that have become increasingly rare.

Off the Canary island of Tenerife 26 migrants were rescued, some of them apparently after two weeks at sea, the Red Cross told AFP.

Recession-hit Spain announced Thursday record tourist arrivals in July as British, German and French holidaymakers packed its beaches at a time of unrest in Egypt and Turkey.

A total 7.9 million international tourists arrived in Spain in July, up 2.9 percent from the same month last year, government figures showed.

Around 200 people were forced to flee from a fire on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca on Wednesday, local authorities said, at similar blazes raged across Portugal.

About 450 hectares (1,100 acres) of forest were destroyed in the Majorca blaze, which was still out of control on the Mediterranean island although 130 people had been mobilized to try to put out the flames.

Spain told Britain on Tuesday it must remove 70 concrete blocks dropped into the waters off Gibraltar before Madrid will agree to dialogue in a heated dispute over the British outpost.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo sharply criticized Gibraltar's creation of the reef last month in disputed waters that were used by Spanish fishermen.

The European Commission said Monday that imposing taxes or toll fees at EU member-state borders would be "illegal", as a diplomatic tug-of-war between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar escalated.

"We can confirm that any tax (or) fees imposed at the border of a member state will be illegal under EU law," Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told a news briefing in Brussels.

British frigate HMS Westminster docked in Gibraltar on Monday in a naval exercise coinciding with a furious diplomatic row with Spain over sovereignty and fishing rights in the surrounding waters.

The frigate, equipped with a Type 23 weapons system including a magazine torpedo launcher, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Sea Wolf surface-to-air missiles and helicopter, arrived at the British outpost in the morning.

Situated in sight of unstable north Africa and on the shipping route to the Middle East, Gibraltar has military and intelligence facilities that still make it a strategic asset for Britain, analysts say.

Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain in perpetuity in 1713 following a military struggle but has since the 1960s fought to have the territory returned to Spanish sovereignty.

Thousands of Spaniards in the depressed southern region of Andalusia are queuing up to play the role of slaves in film-maker Ridley Scott's Biblical epic "Exodus", hoping for a way out of unemployment.

In a region with unemployment at 35 percent, the prospect of work as an extra with a daily wage of 80 euros ($107) has sparked a rush in Almeria where casting is being held for the story of Moses and the Jewish exodus to the promised land.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has called on European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to send monitors to observe "politically motivated" checks at Spain's border with Gibraltar as soon as possible, Downing Street said Friday.

A row has broken out between London and Madrid over Gibraltar, after Spain introduced stringent border checks which have led to waits of up to five hours for motorists trying to enter the British-held territory.

Gibraltar is pleased that Spain is "at last" thinking of taking its longstanding dispute over the sovereignty of the British outpost to international courts, Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told Agence France Presse in an interview Wednesday.

Picardo also accused Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party government of trying to divert attention from a corruption scandal with a dispute over an artificial reef built by Gibraltar.