Barcelona/Tenerife - After intensive investigations, Spanish and Italian investigators have tracked down and arrested three wanted Italians in Spain. The men were arrested simultaneously in Barcelona and Tenerife on May 7. They are accused of a whole series of criminal offenses.
The raid was part of a larger operation against a criminal organization on the Canary Islands. The Spanish police uncovered a veritable forgery workshop on Tenerife, which produced and distributed documents on a large scale. The three arrested Italians systematically used these forged documents to live in Spain under false names in order to evade the authorities.
Several European arrest warrants had been issued for the men on the basis of final convictions. The list of offenses is long: it ranges from assault, damage to property and fraud to receiving stolen goods and theft to various forms of forgery.
The investigation into the counterfeiting ring began after an earlier success. In August 2025, three other fugitive Italians were caught on Ibiza. They too had used forged documents from the same source to secure their escape abroad. The successful operation is the result of close international cooperation between police authorities, supported by the judicial authority Eurojust.
