The Mossos ask for help from the Intelligence Center against Terrorism to close the groups that incite riots

BarcelonaHow to stop the domino effect of Telegram channels and social media accounts calling for new riots of the Blocus style, as seen on Saturday in Barcelona, is currently one of the main concerns of the Mossos d'Esquadra. Doing so by requesting a court order is a process that can be slow, and companies often have slow response times as well. For this reason, as ARA has learned, the Catalan police have asked for help from the CITCO, the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime, which reports to the Ministry of the Interior, to try to fight against Blocus.

Specifically, another body hangs from this organization, which is the UNECI, the National Unit for the Removal of Illicit Content on the Internet, which is dedicated exclusively to removing content of a terrorist nature and linked to violent extremism from social networks and any website. It is a new step, since the UNECI, until now, has mainly been focused on fighting against terrorism. The Mossos, however, believe they can also help in the fight against Blocus, especially in those online spaces where violence is defended. For the moment, the Ministry of the Interior does not confirm that the UNECI is focused on these Telegram groups. In fact, this Tuesday a new protest was being spread in Barcelona for this Saturday, although in a few hours two groups have already been closed.

Closures in an hour

From this unit, they use legal requirements that oblige service providers (websites or social networks) to remove or block terrorist content throughout the European Union within a maximum period of one hour. These requests are used selectively when there are reasons of urgency, gravity, technical complexity, or the need to preserve evidence. In parallel, they also make non-binding communications so that platforms review the content and delete it voluntarily according to their own terms of use.

According to the entity's report, published a few months ago, 62 orders were issued in 2023; 72 in 2024 and 48 in 2025. All of the orders were executed by the platforms. In 2025, the company with the most removal orders was Internet Archive (27), followed by Pinterest (6), Scribd (4) and TikTok (3). In fact, in 2025 —there is no data for 2026 yet— there was a drastic reduction in requests on previously predominant platforms such as Telegram, which went from 90 orders between 2023 and 2024 to just one in 2025, or the disappearance of orders on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) or Google Drive. In total, the majority of orders were linked to jihadist content.