Tens of thousands protested in Bilbao, northern Spain, on Saturday calling for the return of more than 400 prisoners linked to the Basque separatist group ETA who are being held outside the region.

Families of the convicts, who are dispersed across 73 prisons in France and Spain, led the march in the Basque region's most populous city.

Spanish police said Tuesday they had seized three tons of cocaine and arrested twelve suspected drug smugglers from Spain, Britain and The Netherlands in a major drugs bust in the north of the country.

The seizure in the northwestern Galicia region was "the biggest for this type of drug on Galician soil since 1999", the police said in a statement, without revealing when the operation took place.

Members of a far-left Catalan separatist party gathered Sunday to decide whether to back the formation of a new government led by outgoing Catalan president Artur Mas that would work towards breaking away from Spain.

Separatists won a majority of seats in the 135-seat Catalan parliament for the first time in a September election in the wealthy northeastern region of Spain which is home to 7.5 million people.

The leader of Spain's Socialists said Wednesday his party will not back acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's bid to form a new government following an inclusive weekend election.

"We were clear: we will vote against the continuity of the Popular Party at the helm of the government, with Mariano Rajoy as prime minister," Pedro Sanchez told a news conference after holding talks with Rajoy for the first time since Sunday's election.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy faced an uphill battle to stay in power on Monday after his conservatives lost their majority in an election that saw dynamic new political groupings end decades of two-party rule.

For more than 30 years, Rajoy's Popular Party (PP) and the Socialists had alternated power, but millions of Spaniards exasperated with austerity and corruption scandals voted relative newcomers Podemos and center-right Ciudadanos into third and fourth place.

Mariano Rajoy, who has the uphill task of trying to form a coalition government in Spain after his party won elections without an absolute majority, has turned his perceived dullness into a political strength.

Positioning himself as a safe pair of hands who saved the country from economic collapse, Rajoy secured a narrow victory for his conservative Popular Party but now has to enter negotiations with other political groupings to continue leading Spain, or attempt to rule with a minority government.

Lebanese toddler Haidar Mustafa, 3, has fulfilled his dream of meeting Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, 36 days after losing his parents in the Bourj al-Barajneh bombings.

Haidar arrived Friday in the Spanish capital Madrid and was welcomed by Cristiano at the airport.

Straight-laced and sedate, Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has turned his perceived dullness into a political strength, positioning himself as a safe pair of hands who saved the country from economic collapse.

"Do I look as boring as some say?" the 60-year-old asked recently while playing table football on television -- in an unusual appearance for a man who normally shuns the media -- just ahead of Sunday's general elections.

"Si, se puede" -- yes, we can. It was the rallying cry for thousands of "Indignado" protesters who flooded Spanish streets in 2011, and the far-left Podemos party spawned by that movement is now poised to enter parliament on the same slogan.

As Spain battles an economic crisis, polls suggest Podemos could come in third or fourth place when the country votes in a general election on Sunday, taking about 60 seats in the 350-seat assembly.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was accused of being unfit to govern by his socialist challenger Pedro Sanchez Monday in an unusually ferocious election debate held before this week's general election.

Sunday's election is expected to be one of most closely fought contests in years as anger over corruption scandals and a long economic crisis has fueled the rise of newcomers that are threatening the traditional dominance of Rajoy's Popular Party (PP) and Sanchez's PSOE party.