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Last night, a church worker in the southern Spanish city of Algeciras, 65-year old Diego Valencia, was killed in a public square close to two churches by a man with a machete shouting in Arabic, according to media reports citing sources close to the investigation, including the phrase “Allah is great”.
A 74-year old priest from one of the two churches was also injured but was today released from hospital. Police arrested a 25-year old Moroccan man, Yassine Kanja, shortly afterwards and a photo of him smirking while handcuffed in police custody quickly appeared on social media.
The National High Court in Madrid has opened a terrorism investigation related to salafi jihadism. Media reports today said that police investigators had found pendrives with some form of jihadi content on them at Kanja’s home. Authorities in Gibraltar confirmed he had previously been deported from The Rock after turning up there in 2019.
The Spanish Home Secretary, Fernando Grande-Marlaska (PSOE), travelled to the city to meet with police and local authorities. Europa Press, citing Home Office sources, reported that Kanja had been issued with a deportation notice seven months ago but that it was an ordinary, non-urgent, administrative one for improper documentation, not an order related to crime or terrorism, and that he had not been under police surveillance.
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), tweeted that he wanted to send his “most sincere condolonces to the relatives of the church worker who died in the terrible attack in Algeciras”.
The more formal government reactions, though, quickly descended to the level of polarised partisan positioning on Twitter and TV.
The leader of the main opposition Popular Party, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, made controversial statements on Thursday about the attack. “Islamism, Islamic terrorism, is a problem”, he said: “there are people who kill in the name of a god or in the name of a religion but we, however, for several centuries, you won’t see a Catholic or a Christian kill in the name of his religion or beliefs, but there are other peoples who have citizens that do”.
The leader of Spain’s radical-right party, Santiago Abascal, said on Twitter that “we cannot tolerate Islamism advancing on our ground”, adding that “he came to Spain illegally, had a deportation order, was under surveillance for jihadism and was a squatter”. The Vox leader wondered “how many are there like him in Spain?” and blamed “mafias smuggling people” and “politicians who open borders for them and give them lots of public money”.
The Podemos leader and Social Rights Minister, Ione Belarra, said “that tweet defines the far-right perfectly. The far-right does politics by spreading hatred and I think it’s awful, really, to spread hatred against a group that is already heavily stigmatised in difficult moments like this one”. She said police should be allowed to investigate.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Yolanda Diaz (Sumar, Communist Party), said “Spain is a diverse country and proud of its liberty of belief. We will make sure living together prevails”.
One local Catholic priest in Algeciras, Juan José Marina, told a TV programme on Thursday that this was nothing to do with Islam generally, that people there lived peacefully with Muslims, who were indeed praying together with them there today and that: “this is not that Islam is now going to…no, no, this is a person who has taken God’s name in vain and spilt blood”.
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The machete attack in southern Spain