Spain, like the rest of the countries of the European Union, faces the most sensitive Christmas in terms of security in the last five years due to the threat of terrorist attacks being perpetrated during the Christmas period. To address the “enormous risk” latent – ??as the European Commission has warned – the Ministry of the Interior is meeting today to assess the terrorist threat, in which it will be agreed to reinforce security in “sensitive points” such as areas large commercial areas, streets of large cities with greater traffic, means of transport and emblematic buildings, as reported by ministerial sources.
On the table of the meeting, chaired by Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and with representatives of the CNI, National Police, Civil Guard, Mossos d’Esquadra and Ertzaintza, there is no possibility of raising the anti-terrorist alert level, located at 4 over 5 since June 2015 after the attacks that occurred in France, Tunisia, Kuwait and Somalia. The request to raise the anti-terrorist level was already the cause of political scuffle between the opposition and the Government after the Hamas attack in Israel and the subsequent call for “global jihad” made by terrorist leaders. From the Interior they trust that this time the Popular Party and Vox will act with “responsibility and sense of State” in order to avoid messages that generate “distrust or unnecessary alarmism” among citizens.
According to the same government sources, the meeting called for this afternoon will result in a strengthening of operational and intelligence devices for the Christmas holidays. A reinforced alert level 4. The Secretary of State for Security will issue an official letter ordering the State security forces and bodies and the regional and local police to increase the number of agents and intensify surveillance patrols and anti-terrorist response. In addition, it will be ordered to increase random controls of vehicles and people in places where crowds occur on these dates, such as Christmas markets, cultural and leisure spaces and, above all, transport infrastructures.
It is expected that the document will also include the express request to all police officers to take extreme measures for self-protection against possible terrorist attacks.
The head of the Interior, according to sources close to him, found the words of his European colleague Ylva Johansson quite alarmist about the “enormous risk” that Europe suffers after recent episodes such as the attack in which a 26-year-old Frenchman stabbed to death a German tourist and injured two other people shouting “Allah is great” in Paris. Marlaska is more in favor of sending the message that “zero risk does not exist”, but that “prevention” in the fight against terrorism is being “very important”.
This is reflected in the notable increase in operations against jihadist terrorism carried out since last October 7, when the conflict broke out in the Middle East. According to police sources, proselytizing and indoctrination activities have increased “very considerably” in the last two months. Above all in the digital environment, on social networks, but also physically, such as the last Civil Guard operation in which an Arabic teacher who praised suicide bombers among his students was arrested. In others, such as the one carried out in Catalonia in mid-October, those arrested recorded themselves in videos – to later spread them on networks – encouraging their followers to “shed blood.”
This violent material, anti-terrorist sources explain, is intended for possible lone wolves, who continue to be the greatest threat of terrorism in Europe. Increasingly solitary actors, who do not need a structure behind them to act, but rather suffer processes of express self-radicalization.
