The police have arrested an 18-year-old young man in Tarifa (Cádiz) who had sworn allegiance to the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) and who was “obsessed” with the mass attacks committed in Europe. The arrest took place on Monday, although it was made public after the magistrate of the National Court Santiago Pedraz ordered his provisional imprisonment. The detainee, of Spanish origin, is under investigation for crimes of integration into a terrorist group, glorification, self-training, self-indoctrination, and indoctrination of third parties.
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The arrested had undergone a rapid process of radicalization “in the most extreme postulates” of ISIS, according to the police in a statement. After converting to Islam, he had fully embraced the dogma of the terrorist organization.
The investigation, in the hands of the General Information Commissariat, has had the collaboration of the FBI. According to the investigations, the young man expressed “a deep hatred towards Spain and Spanish citizens” and showed admiration for terrorist actions, such as the attack carried out in Nice in 2016 in which 84 people died. During this attack, which occurred during the celebrations of July 14, the French national holiday, a truck ran at high speed for almost two kilometers over a crowd that had gathered to watch fireworks on the Promenade des Anglais in the city. The driver was shot dead by the police.
On Monday, the day the young man was arrested, the agents seized a large amount of jihadist propaganda material and numerous electronic devices that are being analyzed. In the operation, in addition to the agents of the General Information Commissariat, members of the Local Information Brigade of Algeciras participated.
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So far this year, 37 people have been arrested for jihadist terrorism in 27 operations, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior updated until April 27.
The latest reports on the profile of jihadists in Spain emphasize that their characteristics continue to mutate and have increasingly heterogeneous traits. The yearbook on the fight against Islamist violence in 2025, published by the International Observatory of Terrorism Studies, points out that, in addition to the younger age of those arrested, women are acquiring a more relevant role in these extremist movements. The nationalities, up to a dozen, are changing and the ideology that mobilizes them merges narratives from Al Qaeda or the Islamic State with those of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, despite the divergences between them.
Last year, the Spanish security forces promoted the removal of 14,411 violent contents on the internet, mostly linked to the most radical Islamism and, to a lesser extent, to far-right extremism and white supremacy. Every day, 39 websites were located containing videos, photos, text documents, or profiles in which terrorism proselytism was made.