Spain on Sunday urged its citizens to avoid travel to Lebanon except in cases of extreme necessity, citing the "instability" created by the repercussions of the Syrian conflict on the country.

The Spanish foreign ministry urged Spaniards who are already in Lebanon to keep away from places "witnessing political demonstrations" and not to visit Tripoli, Akkar, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut's southern suburbs.

A small plane crashed and exploded in Paraguay, killing six people, police said Saturday.

Two Brazilians and a Spaniard are among those who died when the aircraft crashed into a cornfield late Friday about 280 kilometers (175 miles) northeast of the capital Asuncion.

A pedophile who was controversially pardoned by the king of Morocco appeared in a Spanish court on Saturday accused of sexually abusing a girl in Spain in 2004, court sources said.

His face partly hidden by a cap and sunglasses, Daniel Galvan, a 63-year-old Spaniard, was escorted by several police officers to the court in Torrevieja, in eastern Spain.

Firefighters battled wildfires on Friday in Portugal where they have claimed five lives and tamed another major blaze in northern Spain, officials said.

In Portugal, some 1,400 firefighters backed by Spanish and French aircraft were battling a series of fires that have ravaged thousands of hectares of forest in the north and center of the country.

Prime Minister David Cameron pledged Britain would "always stand up for Gibraltar" as he met the British territory's chief minister on Friday for talks on its border spat with Spain.

Cameron welcomed Fabian Picardo for talks at his Downing Street office in London, as Spain's deputy prime minister in Madrid stressed the need for dialogue on cross-border issues.

Spain's two-year, job-wrecking recession eased in the second quarter of 2013, official data showed Thursday, as Madrid anticipated an imminent, export-powered end to the downturn.

Activity in the eurozone's fourth largest economy shrank by 0.1 percent in the April-June period when compared to the previous quarter, the National Statistics Institute said in a report.

A Spanish court on Wednesday postponed a hearing of a pedophile who was controversially pardoned by the King of Morocco, after the suspect's accuser disappeared, an official said.

Daniel Galvan, 63, was due to go before a judge in Torrevieja, eastern Spain, on Thursday charged with sexually abusing a girl in Spain in 2004 when she was about seven years old.

Facing a squished budget, the town hosting Spain's annual tomato-throwing festival, La Tomatina, on Wednesday is charging a fee for the first time.

Some 20,000 people from across the world -- mostly Australians, Japanese and Britons -- will pack the eastern town of Bunol, many wearing goggles to protect their eyes from the stinging juice, before launching into a gigantic one-hour food fight.

Firefighters and local residents struggled Tuesday to tackle raging wildfires that have consumed large swathes of forest in Portugal and Spain, claiming the lives of four emergency workers.

"This cursed fire won't give us a break and seems hellbent on destroying everything in its path," said Manuel Pinto, a resident of Povoa in central Portugal who was beating back the flames with a branch alongside exhausted firefighters.

Waiting lists for surgery in crisis-hit Spain's public hospitals were the longest on record in 2012 as emergency spending cuts hit home, government figures show.

Updated figures for December 2012 published over the weekend by the health ministry showed the average waiting time for a non-urgent operation was 100 days, up from 76 days in June of that year.