Bedsheets and bars: 'Master of Escapes' caught in Spain after fourth prison break

It's fourth-time unlucky for a man arrested yet again after his latest escape.

Madrid, Spain - Spanish police have arrested a fugitive dubbed the "Master of Escapes" after he broke out of prison four times, most recently from a maximum-security facility in Italy, authorities said Wednesday.

The man, wanted by Italy under a European arrest warrant, escaped from the jail there in December by sawing through window bars and lowering himself with knotted bedsheets, Spain's National Police said in a statement.

Police said he had previously escaped from prisons in Terni and Parma in Italy and from a Belgian prison, where he used a human pyramid to scale the walls.

"It sounds like something out of a movie, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction," police said in the statement, describing the man's repeated prison breaks.

Spanish authorities did not identify the man or say in their statement why he had been imprisoned, describing him only as "dangerous".

He was arrested in in the northeastern Spanish city of Tarragona after police tracked him to a neighbourhood where he was believed to be living.

Authorities said he resisted arrest and that several people accompanying him tried to intervene, with one allegedly injuring two officers.

The fugitive was carrying false identification documents and two 500-euro notes suspected of being counterfeit, police said.

A judge ordered him held in provisional custody without bail, pending extradition proceedings to Italy.