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UNLIKE other European countries such as France and United Kingdom where deadly assaults on civilians claimed by Muslim extremists have triggered communal and racial tension, the Aug 17 Barcelona van attack appears to have brought different communities together in Spain.
Friday saw thousands of Muslims demonstrating against the attack and condemning terrorism not far from the site of the van attack. They were joined by many non-Muslim Spaniards and also elected officials such as the Catalan president and the deputy mayor of Barcelona.
The first such public demonstration was held in the small Pyrenees town of Ripoll north of the Catalan capital not far from the Andorra border. It was this picturesque yet sleepy town by the fast-flowing River Ter to which most of the Moroccan-origin attackers belonged.
The same dozen-man strong cell was blamed for the early evening attack in Barcelona’s iconic Las Ramblas in which at least 13 people were killed and dozens more were injured belonging to 34 different nationalities including Pakistani, and later in Cambrils, a seaside town south of Barcelona, where one woman was run over.
While it took the police a few days to track down the 21-year-old Younes Abouyaqoob, the Barcelona van attacker, the Cambrils five were killed by police just after they launched their past-midnight drive-through attack on pedestrians.
Police are certain that all the cell members were radicalised by an imam.
Just a day after the Cambrils attack, the relatives of some of the attackers, including Abouyaqoob’s mother, appeared in the Ripoll town square carrying placards which denounced the attackers. One such placard held up by a mother in hijab read: not in our name.
Contrary to other recent attacks in Europe linked to the militant Islamic State group where those involved had travelled for ‘jihad’ to Syria, Iraq or Libya, most of the Ripoll boys, ranging from 17 to 21 years of age, were born and raised in Spain.
While some Moroccan and other communities may live in neighbourhoods dominated by them, there is no ghettoisation and all communities seem very well integrated. One example for Pakistanis familiar with Barcelona would be the Raval neighbourhood.
A five minute walk west of Las Ramblas is the Raval locality. The locals call it Rawalpindi with great affection as it is dominated by homes and businesses of people of Pakistani origin. From restaurants serving qorma to tikka kebab and other delights to shops selling packed parathas to takeaway to clothes stores you can find every flavour of cuisine and colour of attire from Pakistan.
And yet many Spaniards also live here and have their shops too. My own brother-in-law, who lives on his farmhouse close to the French border most of the week, has a flat in Raval for when he is in town to look after his business.
Walking the streets of Raval and, for that matter, even along Las Ramblas, one isn’t surprised to see businesses and shops belonging to not just Pakistanis and Spaniards but also Turks, Moroccans and other communities, side by side with no sign of friction. Spaniards are welcoming hosts, despite high unemployment.
Spanish security services too, having dealt with the Basque separatist group Eta for years till it renounced violence more recently, are said to be very clued in about terrorist groups and are reported to disrupt terrorist plans routinely and quietly.
That the different communities are so well integrated also helps their cause as they are usually alerted to terror plots and not only by their own undercover agents and informants. There have also been unconfirmed instances of alerts coming from members of the community itself.
The last major terrorist atrocity, which was claimed by Al Qaeda, was the Atocha Station bombings in Madrid in 2004 when bombs left in various train carriages at the busy morning rush hour exploded, killing nearly 200 people.
Within a matter of days, after a Sim card used in a mobile phone to detonate one of the bombs was found intact, the perpetrators were tracked down to a block of flats in a Madrid suburb. They blew themselves up once surrounded by police.
Here too first the Cambrils attackers and then the Barcelona van attack perpetrator all wore clearly visible suicide belts (found to be fake later) and are said to have rushed towards the police when cornered before being shot dead.
Among the attackers were three sets of brothers and in each case the younger brother was killed while the elder one by five to seven years was taken into custody alive. The families and the entire population of Ripolls are in a state of shock.
Police and the families are now certain that all the cell members were radicalised, while displaying no outwardly signs of this, by a mosque imam they describe as belonging to the Salafi school of thought. He had left town in June this year after having stayed for several months.
This imam, a former convicted drug smuggler, police said, was killed in a premature explosion earlier this August, while attempting to make a bomb in Alcanar, a small town south of Cambrils on the Mediterranean coast.
The explosion flattened the house where the bomb was being made. Two, including the imam, died while one young man was arrested in an injured state. The Barcelona and Cambrils vehicles attacks were stated to be makeshift after the explosion made a bigger planned atrocity impossible. Authorities say the entire cell has now been dismantled.
At the same time, if anything the various communities have been brought together by the tragic events, as in huge public demonstrations the handful of ultra-right Spaniards were forcefully discouraged from raising any divisive slogan or placards by an overwhelming majority.
The question vexing many minds is how long will this harmony remain if the terrorists were to strike again?
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2017
