Spain's Interior Ministry said it had raised its anti-terror alert level to 2 to reflect the risk of possible attacks ahead of Madrid taking over the European Union Presidency on 1 January.
Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba Interior Minister said armed Basque separatist group ETA could use Spain's six-month EU presidency to commit a violent attack or a high-profile kidnapping.
The Minister said an ETA attack could include a kidnapping to get International publicity for its aim to create an independent Basque state made of parts of northern Spain and southern France.
ETA, which has killed more than 850 people in the last four decades in bombings and shootings, used kidnapping as one of its main tactics to get attention in the 1980s and 1990s.
Its most well-known kidnapping was in 1997 when it seized and shot Miguel Angel Blanco, a local politician in the Basque region, after a 48-hour ultimatum to the government to transfer all ETA prisoners throughout Spain to prisons in the Basque country.
