Searches began early on Friday across seven provinces, including a raid on Núcleo Nacional’s Madrid base, a business premises members know as El Nido. The Policía Nacional operation covered Madrid and Asturias, as well as Guadalajara, Valladolid, Pontevedra, Burgos and Alicante. Police carried out at least ten searches and arrested 14 people. Early reports linked to the police gave lower totals as the operation unfolded. The investigation began after incidents near the Jesuit school La Inmaculada in Gijón left several students injured in February.
Sources at the High Court of Justice of Asturias said the arrests concern suspected hate-related offences and unlawful association, along with weapons possession. Judicial sources also described the alleged hate offence as incitement to hatred. The Policía Nacional’s General Information Commissariat coordinated the operation, under the direction of the court handling the Asturias proceedings. The investigation remained open on 6 November, and further arrests have not been ruled out. The arrests are not a finding of guilt.
Among those arrested are the group’s leader and spokesperson Iván Rico, prominent figure Isabel Peralta, and veteran activist Enrique Lemus, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The judge handling the case in Gijón has asked for seven detainees, whom investigators consider possible members of the leadership, to be transferred to Asturias for questioning on Sunday. The other seven are due to appear before the duty courts in the areas where they were arrested.
Peralta, 25, was also part of the fascist youth organisation Bastión Frontal. She was sentenced to a year in prison for a hate crime after calling for the “death” of Moroccan “invaders” at a protest outside Morocco’s embassy in 2021, according to the source account. Germany has barred her from entering the country after she tried to enter with Nazi-symbolic objects.
Iván Rico’s brother David was arrested in Guadalajara, Cadena SER reported. In Valladolid, police detained Lemus, a former Democracia Nacional leader who heads Núcleo Nacional’s political wing, as well as Alberto González de Juan, known as Alberto Pugilato. Juan Navarro reported González de Juan’s arrest. González de Juan is a singer whose rock group describes itself as anti-communist. Spain’s Supreme Court convicted him of a hate crime over racist song lyrics.
The investigation grew out of proceedings opened by the juvenile prosecutor’s office in early 2026. The judicial inquiry followed a Núcleo Nacional mobilization outside Colegio de la Inmaculada in February, near the Héroes de Simancas monument built into the school’s façade. Students complained of assaults after the gathering, where demonstrators used provocative slogans. The call to gather opposed the monument’s removal. Asturias’s regional government had restarted the process, describing the sculpture as a symbol of fascist glorification. It gave the Jesuit Company, which owns the site, 15 days to submit objections.
The group took shape during far-right protests against the amnesty law and outside PSOE offices in November 2023. In February, it registered as a political party under the name Noviembre Nacional, with its headquarters in Valladolid and Lemus as president. Ten people linked to the group were arrested in Madrid in March over public-order offences during the International Women’s Day march. In August, around 20 members travelled to Ceuta during a migration crisis, and police escorted them to the port.
In April 2025, the Guardia Civil investigated the group over a video posted on X calling for an “active defence” of the streets and a joint fight against what it called an invasion. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska described the representative’s rhetoric as manifestly serious. The group had called a demonstration near PSOE headquarters on Madrid’s Ferraz street for Saturday, marking three years since protests against the amnesty law began. A separate UCO operation in the Koldo case involved six arrests and a search of José Luis Ábalos’s home, as covered in this earlier report.
