The man had been wanted on a European arrest warrant after escaping from a high-security prison in Italy in December by sawing through window bars and lowering himself with tied sheets.
The fugitive was arrested in Tarragona in northeastern Spain after police discovered he had settled there.
Police say he had previously escaped from two other prisons in Italy, as well as from a Belgian prison, where he used a human pyramid to climb over the wall.
"It sounds like something out of a movie, but sometimes reality surpasses fiction," the police wrote in their statement.
The man has been called the "mago della fuga" in the Italian media, roughly "the escape king".
