Police evacuated thousands of holidaymakers from beaches at a Spanish Mediterranean resort on Wednesday after a purported ETA bomb threat raised fears of a summer bombing campaign by Basque separatists.

Authorities swiftly reopened the beaches at the Catalan resort of Sant Carles de la Rapita after police with sniffer dogs scoured the picturesque port's five beaches and failed to find explosives.

"Everything is back to normal," Deputy Mayor Josep Pitarch told Reuters. "The Civil Guard searched all the beaches and the rubbish bins and they found nothing."

The alarm came days after two small bombs exploded at seaside resorts in the north of the country and after the government warned ETA bombers may be aiming to strike at the key tourism industry.

Basque nationalist newspaper Gara had said it had received the call about a bomb on Spain's Mediterranean coast shortly after 1200 GMT and passed the message to police. The caller had said the bomb would explode in 15 minutes.

Pitarch said it was the third bomb scare in four days in Sant Carles de la Rapita, a popular resort for Spaniards some 360 kms (225 miles) east of Madrid.

"The first time it happened people were very frightened, but they are much less so now. People are annoyed because we are right in the month of August and this affects tourism," he said.

Police were investigating the origin of the calls, Pitarch said. He estimated there were some 30,000 visitors in Sant Carles at the time of Wednesday's scare, mainly from Catalonia and the neighboring region of Aragon.

ETA, which has killed 850 people since 1968 in a shooting and bombing campaign for an independent Basque state, regularly stages summer bombing campaigns in an attempt to undermine Spain's tourism industry which accounts for more than a tenth of its economy.

Two small bombs exploded in tourist towns on Spain's north coast on Saturday after similar phone warnings but no one was injured.

ETA has not carried out a fatal attack for more than a year.

Source: Agencies