Spain's princess Cristina fought to distance herself from fraud accusations as she faced a tough court hearing Saturday over a scandal that has plunged the royal family into crisis.

King Juan Carlos's youngest daughter, 48, smiled and looked relaxed as she arrived at court in Palma on the holiday island of Majorca, nodding to television crews, photographers and reporters crowded near the door.

The Basque separatist movement ETA plans to make "significant contributions" towards a lasting settlement to its armed independence campaign, a newspaper close to the group said on Friday.

"ETA announces it will make 'significant contributions' to the process 'without delay'," said the Basque newspaper Gara, the usual mouthpiece for statements by the group in Spain.

Spain on Friday denied its security forces had fired rubber bullets at migrants trying to swim to Spanish soil, after nine Africans drowned in the attempt.

The nine, including one woman, drowned on Thursday while trying to reach the Spanish territory of Ceuta from a beach in neighboring Morocco. Other migrants tried to storm through a land checkpoint.

Spain's royal family used to be a cherished part of the scenery on the picturesque island of Majorca. Now a fraud scandal has made them more like a blot on the landscape.

For the royals, the island has turned from a place of sunbathing and yacht cruises to the center of a scandal that has landed King Juan Carlos's youngest daughter Cristina in court for questioning on Saturday.

Officials in Spain on Friday denied security forces had fired rubber bullets at migrants trying to swim to Spanish soil, after nine Africans drowned in the attempt.

The nine, including one woman, drowned on Thursday while trying to reach the Spanish territory of Ceuta from a beach in neighbouring Morocco. Other migrants tried to storm through a land checkpoint.

A 36-year-old convict from the Basque armed separatist group ETA has died in a Spanish jail, authorities said Thursday, at a time of tension over prison conditions for the group's members.

Authorities said the prisoner, Arkaitz Bellon Blanco, seemed to have died of natural causes. A prisoners' support group said the government's policy of jailing ETA members far from home put them at risk.

The most westerly part of France was placed on a red alert for potential flooding on Thursday as high tides and ferocious storms wreaked havoc up and down Europe's Atlantic coast.

Finestere, a department of Brittany which juts out into the Ocean, was braced for two of its rivers, the Morlaix and the Laita to burst their banks as a result of heavy rain forecast for Thursday.

Spanish government figures show that the number of people registered as unemployed rose by 113,097 in January as temporary job contracts created over Christmas came to an end.

The Labor Ministry said Tuesday that the reduction put the total number of those registered in unemployment offices at 4.81 million. Year-on-year, the figure was down 166,343.

Bare-breasted feminists hurled knickers at the archbishop of Madrid as he arrived at church on Sunday in protest at his support for a tightening of Spain's abortion law.

Five topless protesters swooped on Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela as he got out of a car to attend an evening mass at a church in central Madrid.

A teenager was swept out to sea as fierce storm surges hit northern Spain on Sunday, authorities said, with waves reportedly as much as 10 meters (more than 30 feet) high.

"A minor was carried away by the sea on the Rapadoira breakwater in Foz," a town on the coast of the northwestern Galicia region, the national coastguard said in a message on Twitter.