MADRID (AFP) -- Thousands of people took part in demonstrations across Spain on Sunday to protest the killing of a civil guard officer by suspected ETA militants in France while another officer lay close to death.

The rallies were held in the capital Madrid, Barcelona as well as Bilbao and San Sebastien in the Basque region. They came a few hours after King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero led a national homage at the funeral of civil guard Raul Centano.
The protests were called by Ermua Forum, an association opposed to negotiations with ETA, which is blamed for some 819 deaths in its 40-year-long battle for an independent Basque homeland.
Spain's major political parties have called for a united anti-ETA demonstration in Madrid on Tuesday.
Centano, 24, died Saturday while he and Fernando Trapero, 23, were on an intelligence mission in southwest France and accidentally came across the suspected ETA members. Doctors said that Trapero was ""clinically dead"".
Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told Cadena SER radio that the suspects may be part of a Basque commando team preparing attacks and that French police had found chemicals which can be used to make explosives, in a car used by the suspects to escape.
French police stepped up the hunt for the two men and one woman involved in the attack as the funeral for Centano was held in Madrid.
The Spanish monarch comforted Centano's family during the service at the civil guard headquarters in Madrid, which was transmitted live on national television.
The Spanish police officers were on a joint mission with French police against the outlawed Basque group when they came across the suspects in a cafe car park in Capbreton, 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the Spanish border.
After the shooting, the suspects hijacked a car and headed north. They dumped the woman driver unharmed on the outskirts of Bordeaux.