Last Friday night's terrorist assault at the Crocus City Hall concert complex near Moscow, which provisionally left 137 people dead and an even higher number seriously injured after the attackers opened fire with automatic weapons and threw firebombs, has brought even closer the spectre of a large-scale conflict that several European governments have been talking about for months.
Members of the European Commission, with different tones and nuances, sometimes also feed this fear and take advantage of the circumstance to emphasize the need to strengthen lines of defence and significantly increase economic contributions and investments in the continent's security. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is probably the European leader whose voice is most often heard on this subject, while many other EU leaders nod in silence so as not to arouse their respective public opinions.
While waiting for the definitive authorship of the Moscow attack to be known, we know that there are four people arrested. We also know that Vladimir Putin blames Ukraine as being behind the massacre, that Volodymyr Zelensky denies it, that the self-proclaimed Islamic State has assumed responsibility and that countries such as the United States consider the latter hypothesis credible. As at other times, the facts are likely to take time to come out, as truthful information fights with many vested interests.
Either way, it's fairly certain that the future of Europe's defence will be very different from the way we've known it in recent decades. The position of the USA has changed and will change more if Donald Trump reenters the White House. There will need to be a serious and deep debate in Spain which, until now, has not occurred because it has either been consciously avoided or demagoguery and populism have prevailed.
The facts of the Moscow attack are likely to take time to come out, as truthful information fights with many vested interests
It will also be urgent in Catalonia, where these issues always bother us more than in other places. In part, perhaps it is that, since we have not had our own state for several centuries, we have had no need to address that issue. The reason, though, is not so much because the beating of war drums is sure to lead to conflict in the short term, but because analyzing and anticipating events that might happen is always a good strategy.