Spain, like the rest of the countries of the European Union, faces the most sensitive Christmas in terms of security in recent years due to the threat of terrorist attacks during the Christmas period. To deal with the “enormous risk” latent – as the European Commission has warned – the Ministry of the Interior is meeting today the evaluation table of the terrorist threat, in which it will be agreed to strengthen security in “sensitive points ” such as high-traffic commercial areas, high-traffic city streets, means of transport and landmark buildings, as ministerial sources say.
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 in 4 out of 5 since June 2015 after the attacks that took place in France, Tunisia, Kuwait and Somalia. The request to raise the anti-terrorist level was already the reason for a political clash between the opposition and the central government after the attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent call for “global jihad” made by the terrorist leaders. From the Interior they trust that this time the Popular Party and Vox will act with “responsibility and sense of State” to avoid messages that generate “mistrust 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 order ordering the State security forces and bodies and regional and local police to increase the number of agents and intensify surveillance patrols and counter-terrorism response. In addition, it will be ordered to increase the random checks of vehicles and people in places where there are crowds on these dates such as Christmas fairs, cultural and leisure spaces and, especially, transport infrastructures.
It is planned that the document will also contain the express request to the agents of all police forces to take extreme self-protection recommendations in view of 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 “huge risk” that Europe suffers after recent episodes such as the attack in which a 26-year-old Frenchman stabbed a German tourist to death and injured two others while shouting “God is the greatest” 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 remarkable increase in operations against jihadist terrorism carried out since October 7, when the conflict broke out in the Middle East. According to police sources, the activities of proselytism and indoctrination have increased “very considerably” in the last two months. Especially in the digital environment, on social networks, but also in a physical way, as with the latest Civil Guard operation that arrested an Arabic teacher who praised suicide terrorists among his students. In others, such as the one carried out in Catalonia in mid-October, those arrested were recorded on videos – and then spread on the networks – encouraging their followers to “shed blood”.
This violent material, explain sources in the fight against terrorism, is intended for possible lone wolves, who continue to be the biggest threat of terrorism in Europe. More and more solitary actors, who do not need a structure behind them to act, but rather undergo express self-radicalization processes.
