Spain's opposition Socialist Party leader Alfredo Rubalcaba announced Monday he will step down after his party sustained heavy losses in the European parliamentary elections.

Rubalcaba's Socialists and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's ruling Popular Party each lost about a third of their European seats in a backlash by voters, who are angry over the economic crisis and corruption.

Spain faced a changed political landscape Monday after the country's two major parties lost ground in the European elections to insurgent parties that tapped into voter discontent with traditional politics.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party, which has pushed through painful spending cuts since coming to power in 2011, won 16 seats in Sunday's vote while the Socialist Party took 14 seats.

The sister of al-Qaida inspired gunman Mohamed Merah who killed seven people in and around Toulouse has  left France and could be fighting in Syria, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Friday.

French authorities lost track of 35-year-old Souad Merah in March when a school at which one of her children was studying alerted them that the pupil had failed to turn up for several days.

A sexism row forced Spain's top conservative EU election candidate to apologize on Wednesday for implying he had "intellectual superiority" over a "helpless" female rival.

Miguel Arias Canete said after a televised duel against his rival Elena Valenciano that it was hard to debate with a woman, "because if you show your intellectual superiority you are thought sexist for cornering a helpless woman."

The issue of sexism is dominating the run-in to Spain’s European elections after the country’s conservative candidate said he had underperformed in a televised debate because his rival was a woman.

Miguel Arias Cañete, the candidate for the governing Popular Party (PP), was widely criticized for his performance in last Thursday’s debate against Socialist candidate Elena Valenciano, in which he read many of his arguments from notes.

A Spanish mother has confessed to gunning down a ruling-party politician in public in a long-planned act of personal vengeance that shocked the nation, a source close to the investigation told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

Isabel Carrasco, 59, renowned as a strong character who was Popular Party leader of the Leon provincial council, was shot repeatedly in broad daylight Monday as she crossed a footbridge near her home in the northern city.

Spanish police said Wednesday they had arrested 752 people in a massive probe into fake businesses created to obtain social security benefits as well as residence or work permits for foreigners.

It was "without a doubt" the biggest police operation yet against such scams, said Spanish police chief Ignacio Cosido, estimating the overall cost to the state of the frauds under investigation at 20.5 million euros ($28 million).

A Spanish judge on Friday summoned 11 officials from state railway company Adif for questioning as official suspects in a train derailment that killed 79 people last year.

Judge Luis Alaez, who is investigating the accident, said in a ruling he wants to question current and former Adif officials about why there was no automatic braking system in the section of the track were the accident happened.

Police have arrested the driver of a digger that collided with a bus killing five youngsters in southern Spain after the suspect tested positive for drugs, officials said on Friday.

The bus carrying members of a youth football team collided with a mechanical digger on a country road in the southwestern Extremadura region on Thursday evening as the youngsters returned from a match, officials said.

A Spanish court on Saturday remanded in custody a French-Algerian man suspected of fighting for terror groups linked to al-Qaida in Syria before he is extradited to France.

Spanish officers with the help of French police seized Abdelmalek Tanem, 24, in the southern city of Almeria on Wednesday.