FUNDACIÓN VÍCTIMAS DEL TERRORISMO 96 - ENGLISH

` Course director General Miguel Ángel Ballesteros ` Susana Crisóstomo, Undersecretary of the Interior ` Javier López Ruíz, Vice President of the FVT EDUCATION AND COEXISTENCE 19 time when attacks no longer dominate the daily news, they stressed the importance of preserving remembrance and explai- ning terrorism’s human consequences to new generations. They highlighted the educational work of the Foundation and the Memorial Centre through classroom testimony programmes, which have brought vic- tims’ experiences to more than 450 educational centres and around 40,000 students. The opening session also revealed a sha- red concern: the apparent normalisation of the security situation. The absence of high-impact attacks in Spain has created a public sense of calm that does not always reflect reality. Ballesteros recalled that Spain has maintained a reinforced coun- ter-terrorism alert level of 4 since October 2023 and remains among the European countries with the greatest police activity against terrorism. AN INCREASINGLY YOUNG THREAT The inaugural lecture was given by Gene- ral Javier Marín , Director of the Intelli- gence Centre for Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime (CITCO), who presen- ted an updated overview of the threats facing Spain and Europe. His address revealed one of the course’s most concerning findings: the growing presence of young people and minors in violent radicalisation. More than half of those arrested for activities related to jihadist terrorism in Spain during 2025 were under 25, and fourteen of them were minors. Radicalisation, he explained, no longer develops solely in physical or religious settings. The internet has become a pri- me ecosystem for recruitment and in- doctrination. Social media, messaging platforms, video games, dating apps and artificial intelligence tools form an increasingly complex landscape for the security services. Marín described radicalised young peo- ple as members of fully digital genera- tions who conduct much of their social lives in virtual environments. This shift also requires prevention and investiga- tion strategies to adapt. The CITCO Director explained that the centre coordinates information from numerous services and security forces. With a workforce of almost two hundred, in 2025 it facilitated around 22,000 police coordination agreements and analysed the movements of 245 mi- llion passengers recorded through Pass- enger Name Record (PNR) systems. Last year, seven counter-terrorism ope- rations were conducted within Spain, alongside thirteen international opera- tions involving Spanish participation. NEW EXTREMISMS AND NEW FORMS OF VIOLENCE Alongside the jihadist threat, experts warned of emerging extremist phenome- na that are harder to classify and detect. Marín discussed the growth of move- ments such as neo-Nazi acceleratio- nism, which seeks to bring about the collapse of democratic institutions through violence. Among recent exam- ples, he highlighted the dismantling in Castellón of a cell linked to the interna- tional organisation The Base . He also drew attention to the group known as 764 , an extremist network combining psychological violence, coer-