I heard of the attack an hour after it happened, when I left a medical appointment on Via Laietana. The doorman said to me: “go carefully, there has been an attack”. At first I didn't grasp the scale of the tragedy, until I saw my colleague at the door of the doctors. The street, one of the larger in the city, was closed off and there were no cars, the shops had lowered their shutters or were in the process of doing so. The confusion was total and I even overheard a shop assistant, worried and crying, trying to find out where her son was. This was the scene of terror.
Terrorism is global, but the answers are local. Yesterday afternoon, Islamist terrorism caused terror in the heart of Barcelona, with the nighttime kicker in Cambrils, and it was shown that the Mossos d'Esquadra, the police of Catalonia, are of an extraordinary professionalism. A few hours after the events, the Catalan Interior minister, Joaquim Forn, and the head of the Mossos, Josep Lluís Trapero, contributed to calming down an atmosphere with their implacable public appearances. Meanwhile, opportunists used the occasion to try to discredit the Mossos, who have the ultimate responsibility for the security of Catalans, while the Spanish government takes away their officers, resources and information.
The Mossos have the ultimate responsibility for the security of Catalans, while the Spanish government takes away their officers, resources and information
The director of Spanish newspaper El Periódico, Enric Hernández, who doesn't rest even in the middle of August, used the occasion to accuse the Mossos of negligence with a supposedly exclusive and well-sourced piece of news: “The CIA told the Mossos two months ago that la Rambla was a target of jihadism”. In other words, the Mossos were warned and didn't do anything! When did Hernández get this piece of news? Who was the source? Was it made up? The director of El Periódico, who has today put a completely unnecessary photo from the EFE agency on his newspaper's front page, a photo which violates journalistic ethics, has ended up showing everyone how he is, what kind of person he is.
Those against Catalan independence wanted to use this terrorist attack to attack the autonomous community's institutions, to say that the Mossos are like kids playing at being police, ineffective and led by politicians only worried about independence. If this were true, as Lluís Bassets, the director of El País in Catalonia, insisted on suggesting in an abominable article, the Mossos would not have linked the explosion in a house in Alcanar with the events that happened in Barcelona, nor would they have been able to avoid the bad intentions of the terrorists who were stopped in Cambrils while getting ready to do evil again.
We have a good police force and we have a country. And as was seen late last night, when Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and his deputy Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría landed in Barcelona, we also have to put up with the arrogance of a Spanish state that takes refuge in the small palace of their delegation to Catalonia instead of going to the Catalan government's building to put itself at the disposal of the authorities which have the immediate responsibility to safeguard personal security and to ease the situation for the whole public in such circumstances. We have the state against us and the way the Spanish authorities have acted has highlighted this in a very crude manner. This contempt is unacceptable, as is Rajoy and his deputy coming to Barcelona for a photo opportunity whilst their pro-union cheerleaders celebrate it.
This contempt is unacceptable, as is Rajoy and his deputy coming to Barcelona for a photo opportunity whilst their pro-union cheerleaders celebrate it.
As Catalan president Carles Puigdemont made clear yesterday, the fight against terrorism "is not about nationalities nor political ideas, it about fighting for our liberties”, it's about fighting those who want to change our coexistence, our ways of living and the way we understand the world. The fight against global terrorism is a democratic cause that should come above the patriotic miserliness of the Spanish authorities. The example to follow is that of the New York Police Department, which yesterday afternoon sent an impeccable tweet from their account @NYPDnews, illustrated with the shield of the Mossos: “As news continues to emerge in #Barcelona, our thoughts are with those affected by the attack and we stand with our police partners @mossos”. When someone has a good heart and doesn't look to gain political capital out of a disaster, they write things like this. They think of the victims and show solidarity with their colleagues. What a pity it is that not everybody is capable of behaviour as correct as that of the US police. The ever-criticised taxi drivers and the hotel managers of Barcelona showed themselves to stand taller than some journalists and pro-union Catalan journalists. It has to be a question of humanity. Yesterday, in Barcelona, after the tragic circumstances, we could see the best and the worst of the people who live in this country.