On the Plaza Alta in the center of Algeciras, flowers, candles and a small Spanish flag commemorate the place where the Moroccan migrant killed the fleeing sexton in front of the church with his machete on Wednesday evening and injured four other people.

"Islam has nothing to do with it," read a poster that a woman brought with her to a memorial service.

Representatives of the Muslim community of Algeciras, where people are proud of the good coexistence, also attended the funeral service on Friday.

Hans Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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People from more than 120 countries live among the 120,000 inhabitants of the port city on the Strait of Gibraltar.

For the Moroccans, who are the largest group, Algeciras is the gateway to Spain.

The ferries to the Spanish city, where many are struggling, only need a good hour: around a quarter of the residents have no work.

The crime rate is still lower than in the Andalusian capital of Seville.

The situation of Moroccan migrants who are stranded in the city without the necessary documents is particularly precarious.

They included the 25-year-old Moroccan who stormed into two churches in the city center with a machete on Wednesday night, injuring a 74-year-old priest and three other people before killing the sexton on the steps of the church.

Apprehended in June without ID or authorization

It was not only in Algeciras that people wondered why the young Moroccan was still in the country at all.

The assassin was apprehended last June without an identity card and a residence permit, and in early November he was asked to leave Spain.

But it often takes a long time before the identity papers for deportation arrive from Morocco.

The Spanish authorities recently reported only between seven and nine percent of the foreigners who were required to leave the country.

In Algeciras, aid organizations are now reporting that illegal migrants are suffering from major psychological problems because of their uncertain situation, which has lasted for years, but that they often receive no psychiatric help.

The assassin was apparently already undergoing psychiatric treatment in Morocco, as a correspondent for the newspaper "El País" learned in his home village.

which is across the Strait of Gibraltar.

He took drugs, but always condemned Islamist terrorism.

In Algeciras he then apparently went through an "express" radicalization in the past two months, as reported by Spanish media from investigative circles.

According to the first findings, he was a "lone wolf" who had not yet noticed the security forces.

However, they now found that he had consumed copious amounts of "jihadist material" on the Internet.

Shortly before the attack, he signaled support for jihad and the terrorist militia "Islamic State" (IS) on Facebook.

The roommates had been watching his change for some time.

He threatened her with death and claimed he had "seen the devil".

The investigating judge at the Supreme Criminal Court sees a connection to "jihadist Salafism".

In Spain, experts have been observing for a number of years that jihadism is increasingly becoming an indigenous phenomenon.

Six out of ten jihadists have now become radicalized in Spain.

Forty percent are from Morocco, a third has Spanish nationality - like the young Spaniard of Moroccan origin who was arrested on the day of the machete attack in Girona after searching the Internet for information about attacks with blunt and stabbing weapons.

While in Spain bishops and imams called not to let fanatics destroy the good coexistence and to demonize Muslims across the board, the right-wing populist Vox party immediately tried to make political capital.

For Vox, the assassination was a consequence of the great "migration invasion" that left-wing media covered up.

The chairman of the conservative People's Party (PP) Alberto Núñez Feijóo provoked outraged reactions.

Unlike other peoples, the opposition leader said, referring to Islam, "for many centuries no Catholic or Christian has murdered in the name of his religion".