In 2025, the fight against jihadism will reach numbers not seen in more than 20 years. The number of arrests by security forces so far this year reached around 100 last Wednesday, a figure surpassed only by the arrests recorded in 2004, the year of the March 11 attacks in Madrid, when there were 131, according to Interior Ministry statistics. In fact, since then, it has never reached 100 arrests, although since October 2023, when war broke out in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas terrorist attacks and Israel’s military response, the number of detainees has continued to increase after the Interior accelerated many investigations it had opened into suspects of radical Islamist activities, for fear that the conflict would push them to attack.
Indeed, since the start of this conflict and on December 31 of the same year, less than three months, security forces have arrested 54 suspected jihadists in Spain, while during the previous nine months, only 24 people had been arrested for these crimes, according to official statistics. The year finally ended with 78 arrests compared to 46 for the whole of 2022. Since then, the number of anti-terrorist operations has remained at very high figures. Thus, in 2024, there were 81 arrests, to which 100 have now been added this year. In total, since the start of the war in Gaza, security forces have arrested 235 suspected Islamist terrorists.
By region, it is the province of Barcelona that has recorded the greatest police activity against jihadism so far in 2025. There have been 14 operations with 27 arrests. They are followed distantly by Madrid, with nine operations and 13 arrests, and Valencia, with seven and 10 respectively. Fourth on the list is Melilla, with 8 arrests in five police units. These four locations account for more than half of the arrests for the entire year. At the opposite extreme are 21 provinces in which no arrests have been recorded so far this year. In 13 other cases, there was only one arrest.
For Carlos Igualada, director of the International Observatory for Studies on Terrorism (OIET), this “exponential” growth recorded in recent years in the number of detainees for suspected jihadist activities is partly explained by the preventive system applied in investigations. “The police act as soon as there is evidence, however minimal, that this person has a link to jihadist activity.” A way of acting, he underlines, which was encouraged by the reform of the Penal Code of 2015 which made it possible to prosecute certain offenses, such as self-radicalization, which until then were not punishable. “This crime is one of the most common when it comes to arrests, along with the apology of terrorism or the dissemination of jihadist propaganda,” he adds.
The Fernando Grande-Marlaska department’s counterterrorism statistics include a second worrying fact: the high number of minors arrested in 2025 for suspected jihadist activities. This year, there are already 15 – including one when he was in Mexico – according to statistics from the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior). The last two arrests, this week just 24 hours apart. Last Tuesday, a young man under the age of 18 of Spanish origin was arrested by the Civil Guard in Melilla for allegations of radical Islamist activities. A day later, the National Police arrested a minor for terrorist offenses in the Barcelona town of Vacarisses (7,700 inhabitants).
According to CITCO data, between 2015 and 2023, there have been no arrests of minors in four years. And in the other five, there were never more than half a dozen arrests. So, in 2015, there were three; four in 2017 and two in 2019 and 2022. In 2023, that figure was six, a prelude to what ultimately happens over the past two years. In this sense, Igualada emphasizes that these growing figures reflect “the way in which minors are increasingly involved in activities of a jihadist nature” and what this represents as “a new challenge that must be faced”.
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