by Stefano Piazza
The Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office report presented last Thursday at the opening of the judicial year contains a troubling conclusion about jihadism. The Prosecutor’s Office warns that the radicalization of this type of terrorism in Spain is increasingly affecting young people, a phenomenon that even the State Security Forces and the Army Corps have long warned about. “Jihadist radicalization in Spain is characterized by the youth of the radicalized,” the report reads in the section on jihadism. The document warns that « virtual spaces play a central role as catalysts of the radicalization process, and international conflicts and geopolitical crises have had an important impact on jihadist radicalization in Spain».
These warnings confirm that the seeds of hatred among young people arrive first through cell phone and computer screens rather than through religious centers or radical circles. Jihadist groups carry out intense propaganda on the Internet, encouraging their followers to carry out attacks in their hometowns. It is not necessary for them to travel to places of conflict to join jihadist groups. The Prosecutor’s Office argues that Supreme Court jurisprudence has focused on hate speech, especially on social networks, in the fight against this type of crime. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, « behavior that glorifies or justifies terrorist acts does not deserve to be covered by fundamental rights such as freedom of expression or ideological freedom».
As El Confidecial writes to measure this warning with figures, the Public Prosecutor’s Office refers to cases opened in the Central Juvenile Court of the National High Court, which is responsible for studying terrorist crimes committed by Spaniards abroad. It says that in 2023 the Prosecutor’s Office opened 26 cases. In the previous four years there had been no more than nine. The total number of preliminary proceedings initiated,19 correspond to jihadist terrorist crimes, one to the glorification of ETA, and the rest of the proceedings to sexual violence crimes committed abroad. In summary, « jihadist terrorism offenses in this year account for 73.08 percent of the total, which translates into a significant increase in the number of investigations carried out, especially for self-training offenses», the report states. That the situation in Spain is very serious is shown by the data: 20 years after the biggest attack in Spain since then, more than 1,000 people have been arrested for jihadist terrorism, but 2023 was not a year like any other given the 78 arrests and a large majority of Spaniards among them. It will go down in history as one of the black years, a record year if you exclude March 11, 2004, and the following year, since then there have not been as many arrests as in 2023. In 2004 there were 131 and in 2005 there were 92. It even surpasses 2017, a year marked by the Barcelona attacks and where there were 76 arrests.
The report “Balance Sheet of Terrorism in Spain 2023,” released in recent weeks by the “Centro Memorial de las Víctimas del Terrorismo,” offers an updated overview of the jihadist phenomenon in the country. The document reports, for example, on the activities carried out by arrested detainees. Of the 78 individuals arrested last year, 23 percent were involved in propaganda activities or in glorifying jihadism. Another area monitored is the financing of these groups: more than 15 percent of detainees were engaged in this, the incidence of which has increased with the spread of cryptocurrencies. The same percentage concerns those who were engaged in recruitment, which in previous years accounted for about 36 percent of arrests. In December 2023, during “Operation Magrame” in Melilla, nine suspects accused of recruiting young people to join Daesh were arrested. However, the most significant figure concerns those involved in planning attacks, which account for 23 percent. Security forces include in this category actions such as arranging travel to conflict zones, preparing manuals for making explosives, gathering information for terrorist acts, attempts to obtain weapons, and planning attacks.