TVE internacional has just said that another terrorist has been shot dead in Sant Just Desvern (a town just outside of Barcelona), and that he was in a white Ford Focus that ran over a police agent in a control in the Diagonal avenue.
La 1* indicates there is a third one being seeked.
Note that a lot of this information is unconfirmed (including the part about St Just Desvern), the sources are different newspapers. According to la 1, the police agent in question was a mosso.
- Spanish public television’s Channel 1. RTVE has three TV channels: 1, 2 and international.
National Police: “please do NOT report where the police controls are placed.” :smack:
The information about St Just/Diagonal has been given as confirmed and with more detail just now in La 1.
More than 80 wounded just reported on La 1; source is the President of Catalonia, live right now.
I am watching it right now as well. The mayor of Barcelona speaking now. So far she’s giving thanks to everybody who dealt with this situation, and to all the authorities and leaders who had sent their condoleances. Also sending a message of “we will not be cowed by the terrorists”.
Jesus.
I’m glad you’re safe.
Tweet from the king, hours ago: “They’re murderers, criminals who won’t scare us.”
Interesting that there are two very different styles in his tweet account, there’s some which are basically reports on “today the king went hunting” and there’s others which are completely personal.
Mossos has just copypasted one line from 19:24 (it’s 21:22 right now), indicating one driver running over two of their agents in St Just and “TEDAX verifying” (that is, explosives specialists checking… so they’d gotten the guy and the explosives people were checking the vehicle).
DAESH has just announced that this attack is their doing.
I did see something in the news basically saying you can expect that body count to go up quite a bit, horrible news. Fucking bastards.
Mossos reports two people in custody.
TVE reports that the two agents who were run over by the terrorist in a police control point were not seriously hurt. Their companions shot and killed the terrorist as he tried to drive away.
That means there were at least three terrorists involved. It was already rather likely that this was no “lone wolf” act (several things were pointing to it), but this seems to confirm that it was an organized cell.
So I’m going to be taking a trip to Barcelona in less than a month, staying pretty much just off Las Ramblas. While I knew something like this could obviously happen, this is a pretty sobering experience. I’m not planning on making any changes to my trip just yet, but I’ll have to wait and see what happens.
From Facebook comments, I get this impression that whenever a terrorist attack occurs, there is immediately this silent, barely-concealed, eager, salivating tension on social media as folks wait for the attacker’s identity to be revealed:
“Please, please, please let it be an illegal-immigrant or refugee Muslim terrorist!”*
And also some folks:
*"Please, please, let it be a white Christian, or, at least, someone who does **not *fit the Arab Muslim terrorist profile!"
Honestly, I get it. Whenever I hear about such an attack, I always think, ‘‘Please let it not be someone who can be used to make my people look bad.’’
Actually, I did that earlier today with this very event. I got a quick banner pop-up on my cell phone said ‘‘13 killed in terror…’’ And I didn’t know it was Spain, I assumed it was related to Charlottesville, and I thought, dear god let it not be a leftist.
I’m not proud of it or anything, but I think it’s human nature.
It’s pretty sad, however, that we’re at a point where terror is so frequent that such a pattern can be observed.
Well, so far it seems that the profile of the guy whose identity has been made known fits to a “T” the profile of the guys who have tended to perpetrate these acts so far: A guy born in Europe (he is from Marseilles), legal resident in Spain, with a history of petty or not so petty crime (he has a criminal record for domestic violence).
Neither an illegal immigrant, nor a refugee. But definitely fitting the profile of the terrorists that have had a tendency to act in Europe these past few years.
enalzi, I understand your feelings perfectly. But, take it from me, do not allow this to make you question your plans to visit Barcelona. It is a fantastic place, it bounced back from the worst ETA attack ever in the 1980s (>40 people killed with a bomb), and I would bet my right arm that it will bounce back from this as well, and that your visit will be a safe experience for you.
It caused me to wonder if Catalans do terrorism.
Missed edit window: refining the profile of my previous message to the following: Muslim man born in Europe from 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants, young, aimless, with a criminal record, who likely sees himself as a loser, not having done anything worthwhile with his life.
Falls into the web of DAESH because it convinces him that if he acts for them he can become a “tough, scary guy” who will do something “notorious” that will earn him reputation and honor among the files of DAESH, thus ceasing to be a loser and becoming “somebody worthwhile” (as if…)
Well, some 35 years ago there was a Catalan terrorist organization called “Terra Lliure” that went around planting bombs and ended up killing an old lady by mistake.
Catalans actually have a long history of terrorism, but about 100 years ago. This same month, in an international meeting in Barcelona, a guy joked “nobody has ever killed people yelling ‘there is no God’” and I pointed out that Barcelona happens to be the wrong place to say that: there were people killed here under that and similar slogans. The One of the biggest attacks, in an opening of the opera session, killed 20 people.
You are right. 21 dead and 45 wounded, in 1987.
That would be in the frame of the Anarchist attacks of the late 19th-early 20th centuries, if I’m not wrong. Sometimes I have the feeling that history is cyclic in some ways, and that the current wave of jihadist terrorism is the modern “equivalent” of the Anarchist terrorism of 100 years ago.
I oughta remember it well, I was in college in Barcelona at the time and it’s what made A Certain Kind Of Moron switch from responding to “and she’s from Navarre” with Basquist slogans to trying to assault me calling me a murderer. That kind of experience (both sides of it) makes one very wary of huge brushes.