Thursday 17th August hit us all with a one-two. An immense pain attacked us: sixteen people gratuitously and cruelly murdered, more than a hundred injured, some still critical, eight terrorists dead, some shot by the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police), others victims of their criminal treachery. A Dantesque scene.
Faced with this, two reactions. The one from the public and the one from the machinery of power. Each of these can also split into two. The public responded with the calmness appropriate from the members of a mature society, strong in the face of adversity and generous in their understanding of those who are different, but equal. Missing, however, was a massive response from the Spanish public, resolute and expressed in the streets, as there was in Catalonia after the 2004 Madrid bombing. Differences of attitude, for sure.
The most important dichotomy is visible in the machinery of power, formal and informal. In Catalunya, the government and, as a suitable instrument, the Mossos and the Urban Guard, especially of Barcelona and Cambrils, not only acted with diligence, success and tenacity, but have obtained world recognition.
Missing is a massive response from the Spanish public, resolute and expressed in the streets
The head of the Mossos, Josep Lluís Trapero, personifies the success of the management of the police and communications during the dramatic hours following the initial bloody attack which ended, as a first act, at Joan Miró's mosaic on the Rambla. Not only did the police carry out their task excellently, something widely recognised outside Spain, but the job of communications by @mossos, the Catalan police's Twitter account, was as brilliant as it was effective, all from the team led by the journalist Pilar Platja. Within the personal and collective tragedy, the society, public and private institutions and media of Catalonia worked, with no more problems than those typical of such an awful situation, with efficiency, cool heads and full transparency.
It's surprising, on the other hand, how the institutions of the Spanish regime reacted. On the one hand, even though we're in the 21st century, prime minister Rajoy took more than 7 hours to reach Barcelona from Galicia and the first thing he did was meet with the statewide security forces and not those in charge of the investigations, by legal order, an authority which did take from the first minute the jurisdictional control of the situation.
We had no news about the head of State, the king, even on the morning of the 18th, despite it being theoretically 25 minutes by plane from Mallorca. It took the Foreign Affairs minister, in spite of the large number of foreign ambassadors in Barcelona, three long days to get to the Catalan capital, which gave more prominence to the Catalan government. Let us remember that the authorities have suitable means of transport for official journeys without the need to queue up nor be subjected to the peculiar checks we suffer as the rest of the public.
A series of lies, slurs and more lies came at the hands of the main media outlets with headquarters in Madrid, all trying to undermine the good work done in Barcelona and its growing international recognition
In spite of this institutional delay, in a campaign that stands out for its virulence and the coordination of the actors between themselves and the machinery of the state, a series of lies, slurs and more lies that were almost instantly demonstrated to be as fake as a four-pound note came at the hands of the main media outlets with headquarters in Madrid, all trying to undermine the good work done in Barcelona and its growing international recognition.
Let's look at some of them. The EFE news agency reported fake statements by Catalan president Puigdemont about his persistence with the independence movement. Nothing like that, as was amply demonstrated by El Nacional, took place. The aim was to present him as a miser, trying to profit from human tragedy. Another: an unheard of union action, coordinated between unions of the National Police and the Civil Guard, wanted to discredit the action of the Mossos d'Esquadra, an institution practically unmentioned by either politicians or media of the regime.
The complaints from these unions either related to nonexistent facts (the famous offer of the Tedax bomb disposal unit of the Civil Guard, when the Mossos have their own team), or falsehoods like the lack of information on the part of the Mossos to the statewide police bodies mentioned. The reality, as was made immediately apparent, was that the ones being excluded from vital information, despite Catalonia being the principal focus of the jihadist threat within Spain, were the Mossos. Another string of unheard of events and threats against the security of the Catalan, Spanish and European public took place and were quite widely broadcast. It's not necessary to remember it now.
That the secessionist drive did not die down with the murderous attack follows the maxim always preached after a massacre like that of 17th August: the terrorists shouldn't change us
All this, however, has been framed within a context of meanness of the secessionists, now, according to the regime, clearly a minority and one which has kidnapped the sensible majority of the country. That the secessionist drive did not die down with the murderous attack, a drive that marks the political agenda of Catalonia and Spain, that it wouldn't have the brakes slammed on, if not be eliminated entirely (a necessary consequence in the eyes of the loudspeakers of the regime), follows the maxim always preached after a massacre like that of 17th August: the terrorists shouldn't change us. Even more so when the act of terror doesn't have anything to do with the political process happening in our regions, rather the opposite.
What could have quietened down the secessionist drive, although incapable of offering any kind of political solution during more than five years, would have been to not use a coarse rhetoric: unity in the face of terrorism, which doesn't mean political unity of thought, certainly not with those fighting a deep democratic current in Catalonia with, to say it nicely, dark arts of state. Some perceived the result of this fallacy, quite certainly without analysing the causes, in Saturday's protest, which the king took the trouble of heading, a question worthy of another article.
In short, as happens in critical situations, some reacted correctly, putting the general interest in front of their personal or party ones; others weren't as capable of reaching such heights as the situation demanded. Every citizen should take the pertinent conclusions, for example, when it comes time to vote.