Ham with brie, wild mushroom croquettes, cured-meat ravioli: gourmet cooking has put this Basque town on the gastronomic map, drawing visitors from around the world.

Now its culinary assets -- which include more Michelin stars per square meter than anywhere else in the world, and the world's first university of gastronomy -- are nourishing it in the economic crisis.

Spain gave the final green light Friday for the U.S. navy to deploy four ships equipped with missile interceptors in its territory as part of NATO's ballistic defense shield.

Equipped with Aegis defense systems, the ships are to be deployed at a U.S. naval base in Rota, southern Spain by 2013, along with 1,400 US personnel, under a deal agreed a year ago, the government said.

The economic crises rocking Spain and Morocco may favor stronger ties between the neighboring kingdoms ahead of a top-level Spanish delegation's visit to Rabat, despite their historic differences.

Prime ministers Abdelilah Benkirane of Morocco and Spain's Mariano Rajoy are to meet on Wednesday in the Moroccan capital for the first such high-level encounter in four years.

A planned recapitalization of struggling Spanish banks will help shore up confidence but the amount in rescue funds sought by Madrid is not enough to keep the banks stable in stress situations, Moody's said Monday.

"Recapitalization will materially enhance the solvency of affected institutions and help restore market confidence in Spain's banking system as a whole," said the ratings agency.

Tens of thousands of left-wing protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to denounce EU-driven austerity measures being pushed on member states, a day after similar protests in Spain and Portugal.

Chanting "Resistance!" protesters marched through central Paris in a rally organizers said was aimed at fighting EU-imposed austerity, not at criticizing the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande.

Spain's public debt is set to reach 85.3% of gross domestic product in 2012 and 90.5% in 2013, well above previous forecasts, according to figures in a draft budget submitted to parliament on Saturday.

The budget approved by Prime Minister Marian Rajoy's right-wing cabinet on Thursday, tightens austerity in the teeth of growing protests, easing the path to a widely expected sovereign bailout.

Ten people, including a young girl and an elderly woman, have died in Spain as a result of floods brought on by downpours, regional officials said on Saturday.

Five people died in the Andalusia region -- a woman in her 80s, a couple found in their car, a man who died of a heart attack and another man in the village of Archidona, near Malaga.

Squeezed by financial markets and denounced in the streets, Spain's government will adopt on Thursday a 2013 austerity budget which could be a precursor to a full-blown bailout.

The final step before a rescue is likely to come a day later, analysts say, when Madrid unveils an independent audit of its limping banks to determine how much capital they need.

A Spanish cry for a full sovereign bailout, seen as a racing certainty over the summer, faces newly-expressed opposition from Germany even as EU officials lay the groundwork should one be judged necessary in Madrid.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday that Spain did not need a further aid programme on top of promised loans to recapitalise its banking sector, but that Madrid was suffering from a lack of confidence on the financial markets.

Spain needs less money for recapitalizing its banks than widely believed, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Thursday.

"The number is lower than what was feared initially by the European and by the Spaniards," Lagarde told the Journal.