Numerous French and British international schools throughout Spain closed this Monday after receiving a notice alerting them to the presence of explosives in their facilities, a threat that the security forces are investigating.
The affected centers are located in cities such as Zaragoza, Tenerife, Tarragona, Málaga or Madrid, and join similar alerts detected in previous days in other cities in the country. “Since last week there has been a wave of false threats by email to international education schools in Spain,” confirmed sources from the Zaragoza National Police.
In the Aragonese capital, the alarm was raised by the French Molière Lyceum. Those responsible for it claim that they received an email early in the morning by electronic means warning of the presence of explosive devices at the school. From the center, they soon sent the notice to both the police and the French embassy, as well as to families not to take their children to school this Monday until the situation is clarified.
Sources from the National Police have confirmed these events to La Vanguardia and that they were carrying out the appropriate checks, although they assure that everything points to a false alarm.
A similar situation has been recorded in other city centers. From the School House private school, they told La Vanguardia that they had received an email with a similar threat, “although it looked like spam.”
Another of those affected is the British School of Aragon, where the classrooms had opened normally because "we have not received any threatening emails or communications." Even so, the agents have contacted them, after which they have begun the eviction of the center while waiting for the situation to be clarified. "There does not seem to be any danger, but they have already come to pick up the students and the relevant bus routes have been established," school sources assured.
In the case of Catalonia, the Mossos d'Esquadra say that several schools in the community have received an email with a bomb threat this weekend. After activating the protocol established for these cases and carrying out “all pertinent checks”, the agents have been able to determine that these are “false bomb threats” and have opened an investigation “to clarify the facts and identify the person found after this action.”
Meanwhile, the parents of the students of the British school St Georges in Madrid received a message, to which France Presse had access, indicating that the center had opened later this Monday after having received an email during the night informing that it had been placed a bomb at school. Likewise, they indicated that "the same email was sent to several schools in Madrid" and that the police believe that it is "a series of false alarms."
What happened today is a repetition of what happened in recent days in other Spanish schools, where they have received similar threats that in the end turned out to be false. On Friday, December 15, in the case of Alicante, the notice was received at the Liceo Francés de El Campello Secondary Education Institute, while another of those affected was the French high school in Palma.
Spain is at level 4 of terrorist alert and these days meetings are being held in all the Autonomous Communities to coordinate preventive plans for the Christmas holidays.
