This Saturday marked six months since the jihadist attacks of 17th August in Barcelona and Cambrils in which fifteen people lost their lives and which have regrettably marked the political and economic life of Catalonia for the entire period since. A terrorist massacre about which almost everything remains unknown because a very short time after the success of the police action carried out by the Mossos d'Esquadra against the perpetrators, the most ruthless campaign of discredit ever undertaken against a police body was set in action against the Mossos. The facts are that the force's chief, Josep Lluís Trapero, was relieved from his command due to the Mossos' actions in the independence referendum on 1st October, while Catalan interior minister, Joaquim Forn, is in prison and the Catalan police are now hierarchically dependent on the Spanish interior ministry.
The committees to investigate the matter in the Spanish and Catalan parliaments have not moved forward and we are still completely and absolutely in the dark about one of the main questions of that August day: what was the relationship between the Ripoll imam, Abdelbaki es Satty, and the Spanish intelligence service, the CNI? Was es Satty an informer for the CNI at the time of the attacks? Could they have been avoided if the Spanish state's security services had informed Catalonia's Mossos of the status of the Ripoll imam?
The aspect of the case which is most remarkable is that it seems that all these questions do not interest anybody. Only the Catalan pro-independence parties, who have raised parliamentary questions with little success. How is it possible that neither the Ciudadanos (Cs) party nor the Spanish socialists (PSOE) want to know the truth? The only thing achieved by this political wall of silence is to sow doubts about the actions of Spain's interior ministry and its intelligence service. The loss of human lives and the massive convulsion caused in Catalonia make it obligatory for the truth to be clarified. After the Madrid terrorist attacks of March 2004, there was no stone left unturned in any public, political, media or intellectual arena within the orbit of the Popular Party (PP) in the campaign to uncover the truth.
Why is it that silence is now better than truth? We should not accept this situation.