SECURITY TIGHTENS
Government plans to upgrade identification and security procedures for hiring cars, renting holiday apartments, bookings flights, and the handling and purchase of gas bottles
THE MINISTRY for the Interior is planning extra security measures and more personal information exchanges with private companies for car and holiday apartment rentals and the booking of flights.
In a meeting held this week in Madrid, ministry officials presented 11 specific counter-terrorism measures to the parties that form the national anti-jihadist pact (all parties represented in parliament except Podemos and the majority of Catalan and Basque nationalists).
Included in the list is the direct communication of airline passenger information to the ministry that will enable police to identify passengers who already have a terrorism record or those who, due to their profiles and behaviour patterns, could represent a threat to national security.
The measures include the obligation to inform the ministry of personal details of holiday apartment customers and car rental clients, which would affect car hire companies and those renting apartments – including popular online rental sites.
Further measures involve closer monitoring of the Religious Confessions Ministers list included in the national religious entities register (Registro de Entidades Religiosas) and the modification of laws regarding the distribution of crude-oil gas products – which would allow the ministry to have a better control over the sale of butane gas bottles, that have been used by terrorists planning attacks.
Likewise, tighter controls are proposed on the elaboration and sale of explosives and extra surveillance on drug dealing, as in many cases this is used to finance terrorist attacks.
All these measures are the re- sult of analysing the data obtained after the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August.
Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said these measures are designed to avoid the ' legal loopholes' that allowed some of the terrorists to remain in Spain despite their jihadist connections, rent properties and vehicles without raising suspicion, and freely obtain products which they planned to use as explosives.
If the anti-jihadist pact parties give the go-ahead, the new measures that bring Spain more in line with other EU countries will be introduced into Spanish legislation shortly, as the pact members represent the vast majority of parties in parliament.
The anti-jihadist pact was signed by the Partido Popular (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) after the Paris terrorist attack against the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a supermarket in January 2015. After another attack in the French capital in November 2015 (the Bataclan club and Stade de France), Ciudadanos, UPyD and Canary Islands, Aragón and Navarra nationalists joined the agreement along with Union Democrática de Cataluña. Far left-wing party Podemos attends the pact meetings, but only as observers.