MADRID, Spain  —  A small bomb exploded Sunday outside a vacant resort hotel in southeastern Spain (search), the Interior Ministry said. No injuries were reported.

The Basque separatist group ETA (search) was suspected in the explosion, officials said.

The bomb went off at about 3 p.m. in the garden of a resort complex in the Mediterranean town of Villajoyosa, 20 miles northeast of Alicante, a local official said.

A telephone warning had been phoned to the Basque newspaper Gara (search), a method typical of ETA, the official said.

The hotel, normally used as a vacation residence by employees of the bank BBVA, was not in use at the time. The area was evacuated and cordoned off before the explosion, the official said.

ETA is blamed for more than 800 deaths since the 1960s in its campaign for an independent homeland in territory straddling northern Spain and southwestern France.

Forty-three people were wounded in Madrid in a Feb. 9 car bombing blamed on ETA, and two suspected ETA members were arrested in the seaside town of Valencia on Feb. 17 on suspicion of planning an attack.

ETA also carried out a string of small bombings on northern resort towns last summer.