A Spanish court handed two-year jail sentences on Wednesday to three men convicted of splattering cream pies over a top regional politician in protest at plans to build a railway.

Spain's highest criminal tribunal, the National Court, found them guilty of an "attack on authority" by smearing the head of government for the Navarre region, Yolanda Barcina, with sticky white pies in 2011.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday that Spain has promised there will be no repeat of an "extremely serious" incident in which its officials searched British diplomatic bags at the Gibraltar border.

Cameron's assurances came despite claims from lawmakers that Spain was acting like "the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe" in the latest in a string of bad-tempered confrontations between London and Madrid.

Britain said Wednesday it has received assurances from Spain that there will be no repeat of an incident in Gibraltar where Spanish officials searched British diplomatic bags.

The British embassy in Madrid lodged a formal protest with the Spanish government on Monday following what it described as a "serious infringement" of diplomatic protocol.

French President Francois Hollande visits Spain on Wednesday for a bilateral summit seeking a common stance on banking supervision to avoid a repeat of the eurozone debt crisis.

Hollande is pushing for European authorities to adopt common measures to prevent costly bank failures and to directly recapitalize lenders in difficulty.

A Spanish court on Tuesday freed a further 14 jailed members of Basque armed separatist group ETA, a court source said, under a rights ruling that has outraged victims' families.

Spanish media said those freed included Javier Martinez Izaguirre, who was convicted of an attack that killed a toddler in 1991.

Britain has made a formal protest to Madrid after Spanish officials opened British diplomatic bags on the border with Gibraltar in a "serious infringement" of the Vienna Convention, the Foreign Office said on Tuesday.

The incident on November 22 is the latest flare-up between Britain and Spain over the British-held territory in recent months.

A court on Monday sentenced a top ally of Spain's prime minister to four years' jail for tax fraud, in one of the country's most notorious recent corruption scandals.

The judgement came at a sensitive time for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose Popular Party has been rocked by separate allegations of corruption this year.

Spanish police are keeping a sadistic killer known as the "tracksuit madman" under close watch after his release from prison under a European human rights ruling, officials said Saturday.

Manuel Gonzalez Gonzalez was released on Friday from a penitentiary just west of Barcelona where he had been serving a 169-year sentence delivered in 1997 for horrific sexual assaults on 16 women and the resulting death of one of the victims.

Spain's King Juan Carlos is making "satisfactory" progress a day after surgeons replaced his left hip, doctors said Friday, in the latest of a series of health woes that have raised questions over his reign.

The 75-year-old king, who has appeared in public on crutches and looking frail this year, could face a wait of up to three months before he can walk again unaided, his surgeons say.

International credit rating agency Moody's warned Thursday that Spain's banks still face significant challenges despite nearly completing a 41-billion-euro ($55 billion) eurozone-financed bailout.

Spain announced this month it would emerge from the rescue program in January without seeking further financial aid from the European Stability Mechanism safety net.