Spanish police arrested a 26-year-old man in Alcanar, Tarragona, on suspicion of sexually harassing 21 underage girls through social networks and online chat. The Policía Nacional investigation found that he allegedly used a false identity, posing as a 16-year-old boy named Álex, to contact girls aged 9 to 17 in different parts of Spain.
Investigators said the suspect used images of real minors to make the profile appear credible. He allegedly contacted nearly 200 girls, kept regular communication with 37 and sexually harassed 21. The reported pattern involved building trust, requesting increasingly explicit material and threatening to publish private images if girls did not comply, a form of online grooming and sextortion.
The investigation began after an 11-year-old girl from Puerto del Rosario, Fuerteventura, reported online harassment by someone she believed was Álex. They first connected through the chat function of a multiplayer video game. Police said the suspect initially used a friendly, sometimes romantic tone, then escalated to sexual requests and threats.
Police seized computers and mobile phones, along with tablets, from the suspect’s bedroom. Their analysis found 2,958 photographs and 213 videos that police described as child sexual-abuse material. The suspect lived with his retired parents, had no known employment and no prior police record for similar offences. The arrest is an allegation, not a conviction.
The operation involved the Unidad de Atención a la Familia y a la Mujer (UFAM) at the Puerto del Rosario police station and the Grupo Operativo-Policía Judicial in Tortosa. The Grupo Técnico of the Brigada Provincial de Policía Judicial in Barcelona also took part. Coordination across Fuerteventura, Tarragona and Barcelona shows how an online identity can reach minors in multiple regions, requiring investigators in different locations to work together.
The case follows a commonly described grooming sequence: an adult uses digital communication to gain a minor’s trust and seek sexual material or access. A 2025 report on social networks and minors identifies grooming, sexual solicitation, sextortion and sexual harassment among the major online risks to children. Separately, a study of 4,024 adolescents aged 14 to 17, published in the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, reported electronic victimization among 55% of participants and conventional victimization among 41.9%; girls were reported to be 5.5 times more likely than boys to receive unwanted sexual solicitations and 2.5 times more likely to experience grooming.
Those broader findings provide context for risks associated with online contact through social networks and video-game chats, but they do not establish the allegations in this investigation. Police say the initial report from the girl in Puerto del Rosario led to an operation involving specialist family and child-protection officers, as well as judicial-police teams in several regions.
